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: 0.00011248674
Overall Rank: 1,272 | 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	0.00015479826
1,215	Overview of Data Exploration Techniques	2015	SIGMOD	0.00011492648
1,781	Duoquest: A Dual-Specification System for Expressive SQL Queries	2020	SIGMOD	9.6534325e-05
2,412	S4: Top-k Spreadsheet-Style Search for Query Discovery	2015	SIGMOD	8.5101348e-05
2,679	FastQRE: Fast Query Reverse Engineering	2018	SIGMOD	8.1453935e-05
3,349	Reverse Engineering Aggregation Queries	2017	VLDB	7.391292e-05
3,461	REGAL+: Reverse Engineering SPJA Queries	2018	VLDB	7.2839794e-05
3,504	Example-Driven Query Intent Discovery: Abductive Reasoning using Semantic Similarity	2019	VLDB	7.2516839e-05
3,984	Data Canopy: Accelerating Exploratory Statistical Analysis	2017	SIGMOD	6.8741188e-05
4,507	Optimization for Active Learning-based Interactive Database Exploration	2019	VLDB	6.5715731e-05
5,158	Facilitating SQL Query Composition and Analysis	2020	SIGMOD	6.2492918e-05
5,981	Active Learning of GAV Schema Mappings	2018	PODS	5.9278637e-05
6,330	New Trends on Exploratory Methods for Data Analytics	2017	VLDB	5.8123256e-05
6,600	Explain3D: Explaining Disagreements in Disjoint Datasets	2019	VLDB	5.7403306e-05
7,218	DICE: Data Discovery by Example	2021	VLDB	5.5832755e-05
8,510	Exploring the Data Wilderness through Examples	2019	SIGMOD	5.326492e-05
9,192	Data-Driven Insight Synthesis for Multi-Dimensional Data	2024	VLDB	5.2110714e-05
9,550	SQuID: Semantic Similarity-Aware Query Intent Discovery	2018	SIGMOD	5.1594571e-05
9,619	Interactive and Deterministic Data Cleaning: A Tossed Stone Raises a Thousand Ripples	2016	SIGMOD	5.1502244e-05
10,673	Qualitative Join Discovery in Data Lakes using Examples	2026	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
11,757	Cornet: Learning Table Formatting Rules By Example	2023	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,975	On Optimizing the Trade-off between Privacy and Utility in Data Provenance	2021	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
12,089	SPARQL Rewriting: Towards Desired Results	2020	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
12,131	Demonstration of a Multiresolution Schema Mapping System	2019	CIDR	4.9793485e-05
12,143	Generating Selective Filters for Access Method and Physical Design Evaluation	2019	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-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	0.00047394041
129	Efficient and Extensible Algorithms for Multi Query Optimization	2000	SIGMOD	0.0003040756
270	BLINKS: Ranked Keyword Searches on Graphs	2007	SIGMOD	0.00022599109
319	Making Database Systems Usable	2007	SIGMOD	0.00021164857
518	Query by Output	2009	SIGMOD	0.00016944862
942	SPARK: Top-k Keyword Query in Relational Databases	2007	SIGMOD	0.00012956137
1,053	Answering Table Queries on the Web using Column Keywords	2012	VLDB	0.00012274222
1,221	SODA: Generating SQL for Business Users	2012	VLDB	0.00011473702
1,345	Reverse Engineering Complex Join Queries	2013	SIGMOD	0.00010953079
1,501	Keyword Search in Databases: The Power of RDBMS	2009	SIGMOD	0.00010461358
1,565	Keyword Proximity Search in Complex Data Graphs	2008	SIGMOD	0.00010220855
1,776	Sample-Driven Schema Mapping	2012	SIGMOD	9.6674087e-05
1,906	EASE: An Effective 3-in-1 Keyword Search Method for Unstructured, Semi-structured and Structured Data	2008	SIGMOD	9.3981082e-05
4,447	Keyword Search on Relational Data Streams	2007	SIGMOD	6.5968014e-05
4,486	Optimization of Continuous Queries with Shared Expensive Filters	2007	PODS	6.5788984e-05
7,027	Near-Optimal Algorithms for Shared Filter Evaluation in Data Stream Systems	2008	SIGMOD	5.6179837e-05

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#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	10,508	Succinct Structure Representations for Efficient Query Optimization	2026	SIGMOD
2	7,615	Processing Top-k Join Queries	2010	VLDB
3	2,488	Computing Local Sensitivities of Counting Queries with Joins	2020	SIGMOD
4	10,386	Towards Output-Optimal Uniform Sampling and Approximate Counting for Join-Project Queries	2026	PODS
5	869	Query Optimization in the Presence of Limited Access Patterns	1999	SIGMOD
6	4,660	Reverse Engineering SPJ-Queries from Examples	2017	PODS
7	1,186	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	2,412	S4: Top-k Spreadsheet-Style Search for Query Discovery	2015	SIGMOD