Advances of Query Processing in Vector Databases

Summary: Tutorial on query processing for vector databases, covering similarity, multi-similarity, filtered similarity search, and similarity joins. Unifies recent techniques and identifies open challenges for efficient multimodal vector management. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Aug 28 2026)

Paper ID: h86d5b2ebc4d37dce
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2026
Pagerank: 4.9769913e-05
Overall Rank: 11,037 | 25.82%
DOI: 10.14778/3827998.3828146
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

No non-self incoming citations found for this paper in this database.

Authors

1. Jiadong Xie (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
2. Yingfan Liu (Xidian University)
3. Jeffrey Xu Yu (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

BibTeX Citation

@article{xie_vldb26,
        title = {{Advances of Query Processing in Vector Databases}},
        author = {Xie, Jiadong and Liu, Yingfan and Yu, Jeffrey Xu},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '26},
        volume = {19},
        number = {12},
        pages = {4893--4899},
        doi = {10.14778/3827998.3828146},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3827998.3828146},
        year = {2026}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 0 of 0 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 46 of 46 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
74	Fast Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search With The Navigating Spreading-out Graph	2019	VLDB	0.00037145866
146	Efficient Processing of Spatial Joins Using R-trees	1993	SIGMOD	0.00029048509
189	Milvus: A Purpose-Built Vector Data Management System	2021	SIGMOD	0.0002585319
339	AnalyticDB-V: A Hybrid Analytical Engine Towards Query Fusion for Structured and Unstructured Data	2020	VLDB	0.00020561716
344	A Comprehensive Survey and Experimental Comparison of Graph-Based Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2021	VLDB	0.00020455839
712	Cache locality is not enough: High-Performance Nearest Neighbor Search with Product Quantization Fast Scan	2016	VLDB	0.00014593534
803	RaBitQ: Quantizing High-Dimensional Vectors with a Theoretical Error Bound for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2024	SIGMOD	0.00013838349
838	Improving Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search through Learned Adaptive Early Termination	2020	SIGMOD	0.0001355054
1,166	Efficient Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search in Multi-dimensional Databases	2023	SIGMOD	0.0001172922
1,225	ACORN: Performant and Predicate-Agnostic Search Over Vector Embeddings and Structured Data	2024	SIGMOD	0.00011447937
1,421	V-SMART-Join: A Scalable MapReduce Framework for All-Pair Similarity Joins of Multisets and Vectors	2012	VLDB	0.00010722146
1,600	High-Dimensional Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search: with Reliable and Efficient Distance Comparison Operations	2023	SIGMOD	0.00010111099
1,603	Starling: An I/O-Efficient Disk-Resident Graph Index Framework for High-Dimensional Vector Similarity Search on Data Segment	2024	SIGMOD	0.00010100279
1,618	Towards Efficient Index Construction and Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search in High-Dimensional Spaces	2023	VLDB	0.00010053127
1,958	SeRF: Segment Graph for Range-Filtering Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2024	SIGMOD	9.3118048e-05
1,998	Epsilon Grid Order: An Algorithm for the Similarity Join on Massive High-Dimensional Data	2001	SIGMOD	9.2123795e-05
2,310	Secure kNN Computation on Encrypted Databases	2009	SIGMOD	8.662463e-05
2,464	Output-optimal Parallel Algorithms for Similarity Joins	2017	PODS	8.4221003e-05
2,483	AnalyticDB: Real-time OLAP Database System at Alibaba Cloud	2019	VLDB	8.3973995e-05
2,717	iRangeGraph: Improvising Range-dedicated Graphs for Range-filtering Nearest Neighbor Search	2024	SIGMOD	8.0953706e-05
2,783	Navigating Labels and Vectors: A Unified Approach to Filtered Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2024	SIGMOD	8.0204877e-05
2,821	Practical and Asymptotically Optimal Quantization of High-Dimensional Vectors in Euclidean Space for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2025	SIGMOD	7.9674226e-05
3,378	SymphonyQG: Towards Symphonious Integration of Quantization and Graph for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2025	SIGMOD	7.3542798e-05
3,882	RoarGraph: A Projected Bipartite Graph for Efficient Cross-Modal Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2024	VLDB	6.9477043e-05
4,051	Revisiting the Index Construction of Proximity Graph-Based Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2025	VLDB	6.8266649e-05
4,347	UNIFY: Unified Index for Range Filtered Approximate Nearest Neighbors Search	2025	VLDB	6.6457039e-05
4,600	Steiner-Hardness: A Query Hardness Measure for Graph-Based ANN Indexes	2024	VLDB	6.5055567e-05
6,127	DIGRA: A Dynamic Graph Indexing for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search with Range Filter	2025	SIGMOD	5.8757178e-05
6,461	Efficient Dynamic Indexing for Range Filtered Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2025	SIGMOD	5.7744005e-05
6,467	Integrating Vector Databases across Embedding Models	2026	SIGMOD	5.7729149e-05
6,836	Filtered Vector Search: State-of-the-art and Research Opportunities	2025	VLDB	5.6658357e-05
7,006	Accelerating Graph Indexing for ANNS on Modern CPUs	2025	SIGMOD	5.6212001e-05
7,337	Wolverine: Highly Efficient Monotonic Search Path Repair for Graph-based ANN Index Updates	2025	VLDB	5.5472184e-05
7,566	Cache-oblivious High-performance Similarity Join	2019	SIGMOD	5.4936211e-05
7,594	Scalable Graph Indexing using GPUs for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2026	SIGMOD	5.4865404e-05
7,600	DEG: Efficient Hybrid Vector Search Using the Dynamic Edge Navigation Graph	2025	SIGMOD	5.4854217e-05
8,039	VecFlow: A High-Performance Vector Data Management System for Filtered-Search on GPUs	2026	SIGMOD	5.4009572e-05
8,350	Fast Graph Vector Search via Hardware Acceleration and Delayed-Synchronization Traversal	2025	VLDB	5.3481387e-05
8,416	Fast Approximate Similarity Join in Vector Databases	2025	SIGMOD	5.3341916e-05
9,146	DARTH: Declarative Recall Through Early Termination for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2026	SIGMOD	5.2199557e-05
10,328	PGTuner: An Efficient Framework for Automatic and Transferable Configuration Tuning of Proximity Graphs	2026	SIGMOD	5.0322912e-05
10,330	Dynamically Detect and Fix Hardness for Efficient Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2026	SIGMOD	5.0322912e-05
10,331	TRIM: Accelerating High-Dimensional Vector Similarity Search with Enhanced Triangle-Inequality-Based Pruning	2026	SIGMOD	5.0322912e-05
10,332	WoW: A Window-to-Window Incremental Index for Range-Filtering Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2026	SIGMOD	5.0322912e-05
10,333	Fast-Convergent Proximity Graphs for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2026	SIGMOD	5.0322912e-05
10,558	Beyond Vector Search: Querying With and Without Predicates	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05

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1	6,467	Integrating Vector Databases across Embedding Models	2026	SIGMOD
2	11,180	VQLens: A Demonstration of Vector Query Execution Analysis	2025	SIGMOD
3	10,763	An Experimental Evaluation of Hybrid Querying on Vectors	2026	VLDB
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