Discovering Queries based on Example Tuples

Summary: Given a few example tuples, the paper tackles discovering the minimal project-join query that contains them. Novel algorithms deliver substantial efficiency gains over naive approaches, advancing query-by-example discovery in data management. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h6949be480cbd2789
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2014
Pagerank: 0.00011243661
Overall Rank: 1,273 | 91.45%
DOI: 10.1145/2588555.2593664

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Yanyan Shen (Microsoft; National University of Singapore)
2. Kaushik Chakrabarti (Microsoft)
3. Surajit Chaudhuri (Microsoft)
4. Bolin Ding (Microsoft)
5. Lev Novik (Microsoft)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{shen_sigmod14,
        title = {{Discovering Queries based on Example Tuples}},
        author = {Shen, Yanyan and Chakrabarti, Kaushik and Chaudhuri, Surajit and Ding, Bolin and Novik, Lev},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '14},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/2588555.2593664},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2588555.2593664},
        year = {2014}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 25 of 25 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
624	Data Lake Management: Challenges and Opportunities	2019	VLDB	0.00015476813
1,216	Overview of Data Exploration Techniques	2015	SIGMOD	0.00011487268
1,781	Duoquest: A Dual-Specification System for Expressive SQL Queries	2020	SIGMOD	9.6499657e-05
2,413	S4: Top-k Spreadsheet-Style Search for Query Discovery	2015	SIGMOD	8.5063082e-05
2,679	FastQRE: Fast Query Reverse Engineering	2018	SIGMOD	8.1415698e-05
3,349	Reverse Engineering Aggregation Queries	2017	VLDB	7.3878253e-05
3,461	REGAL+: Reverse Engineering SPJA Queries	2018	VLDB	7.2806224e-05
3,504	Example-Driven Query Intent Discovery: Abductive Reasoning using Semantic Similarity	2019	VLDB	7.2483123e-05
3,985	Data Canopy: Accelerating Exploratory Statistical Analysis	2017	SIGMOD	6.8708857e-05
4,509	Optimization for Active Learning-based Interactive Database Exploration	2019	VLDB	6.5684897e-05
5,159	Facilitating SQL Query Composition and Analysis	2020	SIGMOD	6.2464819e-05
5,982	Active Learning of GAV Schema Mappings	2018	PODS	5.9250649e-05
6,333	New Trends on Exploratory Methods for Data Analytics	2017	VLDB	5.8095741e-05
6,602	Explain3D: Explaining Disagreements in Disjoint Datasets	2019	VLDB	5.7376131e-05
7,220	DICE: Data Discovery by Example	2021	VLDB	5.5806325e-05
8,516	Exploring the Data Wilderness through Examples	2019	SIGMOD	5.3239705e-05
9,201	Data-Driven Insight Synthesis for Multi-Dimensional Data	2024	VLDB	5.2086045e-05
9,551	SQuID: Semantic Similarity-Aware Query Intent Discovery	2018	SIGMOD	5.1592374e-05
9,626	Interactive and Deterministic Data Cleaning: A Tossed Stone Raises a Thousand Ripples	2016	SIGMOD	5.1477881e-05
10,684	Qualitative Join Discovery in Data Lakes using Examples	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
11,763	Cornet: Learning Table Formatting Rules By Example	2023	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,981	On Optimizing the Trade-off between Privacy and Utility in Data Provenance	2021	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
12,095	SPARQL Rewriting: Towards Desired Results	2020	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
12,137	Demonstration of a Multiresolution Schema Mapping System	2019	CIDR	4.9769913e-05
12,149	Generating Selective Filters for Access Method and Physical Design Evaluation	2019	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 16 of 16 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
38	DISCOVER: Keyword Search in Relational Databases	2002	VLDB	0.00047373961
129	Efficient and Extensible Algorithms for Multi Query Optimization	2000	SIGMOD	0.00030395767
270	BLINKS: Ranked Keyword Searches on Graphs	2007	SIGMOD	0.00022588961
319	Making Database Systems Usable	2007	SIGMOD	0.00021155013
519	Query by Output	2009	SIGMOD	0.00016937515
942	SPARK: Top-k Keyword Query in Relational Databases	2007	SIGMOD	0.00012950177
1,053	Answering Table Queries on the Web using Column Keywords	2012	VLDB	0.00012268624
1,221	SODA: Generating SQL for Business Users	2012	VLDB	0.00011469979
1,345	Reverse Engineering Complex Join Queries	2013	SIGMOD	0.00010948072
1,501	Keyword Search in Databases: The Power of RDBMS	2009	SIGMOD	0.00010456517
1,565	Keyword Proximity Search in Complex Data Graphs	2008	SIGMOD	0.00010216262
1,776	Sample-Driven Schema Mapping	2012	SIGMOD	9.6631141e-05
1,907	EASE: An Effective 3-in-1 Keyword Search Method for Unstructured, Semi-structured and Structured Data	2008	SIGMOD	9.3936687e-05
4,449	Keyword Search on Relational Data Streams	2007	SIGMOD	6.5936949e-05
4,489	Optimization of Continuous Queries with Shared Expensive Filters	2007	PODS	6.5764656e-05
7,028	Near-Optimal Algorithms for Shared Filter Evaluation in Data Stream Systems	2008	SIGMOD	5.6153559e-05

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#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	10,519	Succinct Structure Representations for Efficient Query Optimization	2026	SIGMOD
2	7,621	Processing Top-k Join Queries	2010	VLDB
3	2,488	Computing Local Sensitivities of Counting Queries with Joins	2020	SIGMOD
4	10,398	Towards Output-Optimal Uniform Sampling and Approximate Counting for Join-Project Queries	2026	PODS
5	870	Query Optimization in the Presence of Limited Access Patterns	1999	SIGMOD
6	4,662	Reverse Engineering SPJ-Queries from Examples	2017	PODS
7	1,185	Adaptive Optimization of Very Large Join Queries	2018	SIGMOD
8	1,345	Reverse Engineering Complex Join Queries	2013	SIGMOD
9	1,581	Example-driven Design of Efficient Record Matching Queries	2007	VLDB
10	2,413	S4: Top-k Spreadsheet-Style Search for Query Discovery	2015	SIGMOD