Query From Examples: An Iterative, Data-Driven Approach to Query Construction

Summary: Query From Examples (QFE) enables non-experts to iteratively construct SQL queries from input–output examples. It avoids synthetic distinguishers and instead uses near-original D,R pairs to minimize user effort, evaluated on SQLShare data. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h95cc14b6e687f2c4
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2015
Pagerank: 0.00011490045
Overall Rank: 1,214 | 91.87%
DOI: 10.14778/2831360.2831373
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Hao Li (National University of Singapore)
2. Chee-Yong Chan (National University of Singapore)
3. David Maier (Portland State University)

BibTeX Citation

@article{li_vldb15,
        title = {{Query From Examples: An Iterative, Data-Driven Approach to Query Construction}},
        author = {Li, Hao and Chan, Chee-Yong and Maier, David},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '15},
        volume = {8},
        number = {13},
        pages = {2158--2169},
        doi = {10.14778/2831360.2831373},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/2831360.2831373},
        year = {2015}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 23 of 23 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,750	Duoquest: A Dual-Specification System for Expressive SQL Queries	2020	SIGMOD	9.7140093e-05
2,686	FastQRE: Fast Query Reverse Engineering	2018	SIGMOD	8.1157127e-05
3,353	Reverse Engineering Aggregation Queries	2017	VLDB	7.3674867e-05
3,503	Example-Driven Query Intent Discovery: Abductive Reasoning using Semantic Similarity	2019	VLDB	7.2305074e-05
4,526	Optimization for Active Learning-based Interactive Database Exploration	2019	VLDB	6.5474668e-05
4,857	Interactive Query Synthesis from Input-Output Examples	2017	SIGMOD	6.3653978e-05
5,992	Active Learning of GAV Schema Mappings	2018	PODS	5.9058443e-05
6,344	New Trends on Exploratory Methods for Data Analytics	2017	VLDB	5.7903641e-05
7,239	DICE: Data Discovery by Example	2021	VLDB	5.5621794e-05
7,462	EQUI-VOCAL: Synthesizing Queries for Compositional Video Events from Limited User Interactions	2023	VLDB	5.5065907e-05
7,884	Learning Over Dirty Data Without Cleaning	2020	SIGMOD	5.4169982e-05
8,531	Exploring the Data Wilderness through Examples	2019	SIGMOD	5.3063661e-05
8,887	FormaT5: Abstention and Examples for Conditional Table Formatting with Natural Language	2024	VLDB	5.2431858e-05
9,073	Generation of Training Examples for Tabular Natural Language Inference	2023	SIGMOD	5.2117663e-05
9,174	Constructing Expressive Relational Queries with Dual-Specification Synthesis	2020	CIDR	5.200591e-05
9,224	Data-Driven Insight Synthesis for Multi-Dimensional Data	2024	VLDB	5.1913816e-05
9,577	SQuID: Semantic Similarity-Aware Query Intent Discovery	2018	SIGMOD	5.1421777e-05
9,983	Wred: Workload Reduction for Scalable Index Tuning	2024	SIGMOD	5.0860177e-05
10,057	The Data Interaction Game	2018	SIGMOD	5.0766855e-05
10,273	Scalable and Usable Relational Learning With Automatic Language Bias	2021	SIGMOD	5.0356939e-05
10,745	Qualitative Join Discovery in Data Lakes using Examples	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
11,731	Extremal Fitting Problems for Conjunctive Queries	2023	PODS	4.9605343e-05
11,807	Cornet: Learning Table Formatting Rules By Example	2023	VLDB	4.9605343e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 10 of 10 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
6	Pig Latin: A Not-So-Foreign Language for Data Processing	2008	SIGMOD	0.0010494385
864	SnipSuggest: Context-Aware Autocompletion for SQL	2011	VLDB	0.00013358173
1,312	Assisted Querying using Instant-Response Interfaces	2007	SIGMOD	0.00011061014
1,353	Reverse Engineering Complex Join Queries	2013	SIGMOD	0.00010913748
1,542	Query Steering for Interactive Data Exploration	2013	CIDR	0.00010280869
1,787	Sample-Driven Schema Mapping	2012	SIGMOD	9.6333179e-05
2,656	Explore-by-Example: An Automatic Query Steering Framework for Interactive Data Exploration	2014	SIGMOD	8.1460698e-05
2,899	SQL QueRIE Recommendations	2010	VLDB	7.8825624e-05
4,179	SPIDER: a Schema mapPIng DEbuggeR	2006	VLDB	6.7474472e-05
4,287	Automatic Example Queries for Ad Hoc Databases	2011	SIGMOD	6.6684778e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	6,745	Schema-free SQL	2014	SIGMOD
2	3,100	Learning to Create Data-Integrating Queries	2008	VLDB
3	4,638	QueryVis: Logic-based Diagrams help Users Understand Complicated SQL Queries Faster	2020	SIGMOD
4	9,090	Understanding Queries by Conditional Instances	2022	SIGMOD
5	5,507	PATSQL: Efficient Synthesis of SQL Queries from Example Tables with Quick Inference of Projected Columns	2021	VLDB
6	1,054	Data-Driven Understanding and Refinement of Schema Mappings	2001	SIGMOD
7	12,561	Mirror mirror on the wall, which query's fairest of them all?	2013	CIDR
8	5,160	Facilitating SQL Query Composition and Analysis	2020	SIGMOD
9	672	A Formal Approach to Finding Explanations for Database Queries	2014	SIGMOD
10	4,287	Automatic Example Queries for Ad Hoc Databases	2011	SIGMOD