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: 0.00011524858
Overall Rank: 1,211 | 91.86%
DOI: 10.14778/2831360.2831373

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
1,781	Duoquest: A Dual-Specification System for Expressive SQL Queries	2020	SIGMOD	9.6534325e-05
2,679	FastQRE: Fast Query Reverse Engineering	2018	SIGMOD	8.1453935e-05
3,349	Reverse Engineering Aggregation Queries	2017	VLDB	7.391292e-05
3,504	Example-Driven Query Intent Discovery: Abductive Reasoning using Semantic Similarity	2019	VLDB	7.2516839e-05
4,507	Optimization for Active Learning-based Interactive Database Exploration	2019	VLDB	6.5715731e-05
4,838	Interactive Query Synthesis from Input-Output Examples	2017	SIGMOD	6.3871056e-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
7,218	DICE: Data Discovery by Example	2021	VLDB	5.5832755e-05
7,447	EQUI-VOCAL: Synthesizing Queries for Compositional Video Events from Limited User Interactions	2023	VLDB	5.5240718e-05
7,875	Learning Over Dirty Data Without Cleaning	2020	SIGMOD	5.4355826e-05
8,510	Exploring the Data Wilderness through Examples	2019	SIGMOD	5.326492e-05
8,860	FormaT5: Abstention and Examples for Conditional Table Formatting with Natural Language	2024	VLDB	5.263072e-05
9,109	Generation of Training Examples for Tabular Natural Language Inference	2023	SIGMOD	5.2280464e-05
9,143	Constructing Expressive Relational Queries with Dual-Specification Synthesis	2020	CIDR	5.2203147e-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
10,016	The Data Interaction Game	2018	SIGMOD	5.0959403e-05
10,235	Scalable and Usable Relational Learning With Automatic Language Bias	2021	SIGMOD	5.0547931e-05
10,297	Wred: Workload Reduction for Scalable Index Tuning	2024	SIGMOD	5.0430432e-05
10,673	Qualitative Join Discovery in Data Lakes using Examples	2026	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
11,679	Extremal Fitting Problems for Conjunctive Queries	2023	PODS	4.9793485e-05
11,757	Cornet: Learning Table Formatting Rules By Example	2023	VLDB	4.9793485e-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	0.001052036
861	SnipSuggest: Context-Aware Autocompletion for SQL	2011	VLDB	0.00013402933
1,311	Assisted Querying using Instant-Response Interfaces	2007	SIGMOD	0.00011065979
1,345	Reverse Engineering Complex Join Queries	2013	SIGMOD	0.00010953079
1,537	Query Steering for Interactive Data Exploration	2013	CIDR	0.00010319063
1,776	Sample-Driven Schema Mapping	2012	SIGMOD	9.6674087e-05
2,648	Explore-by-Example: An Automatic Query Steering Framework for Interactive Data Exploration	2014	SIGMOD	8.1761271e-05
2,883	SQL QueRIE Recommendations	2010	VLDB	7.9108916e-05
4,160	SPIDER: a Schema mapPIng DEbuggeR	2006	VLDB	6.7716256e-05
4,273	Automatic Example Queries for Ad Hoc Databases	2011	SIGMOD	6.6919508e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	6,724	Schema-free SQL	2014	SIGMOD
2	3,088	Learning to Create Data-Integrating Queries	2008	VLDB
3	4,617	QueryVis: Logic-based Diagrams help Users Understand Complicated SQL Queries Faster	2020	SIGMOD
4	9,061	Understanding Queries by Conditional Instances	2022	SIGMOD
5	5,520	PATSQL: Efficient Synthesis of SQL Queries from Example Tables with Quick Inference of Projected Columns	2021	VLDB
6	1,050	Data-Driven Understanding and Refinement of Schema Mappings	2001	SIGMOD
7	5,158	Facilitating SQL Query Composition and Analysis	2020	SIGMOD
8	670	A Formal Approach to Finding Explanations for Database Queries	2014	SIGMOD
9	12,512	Mirror mirror on the wall, which query's fairest of them all?	2013	CIDR
10	4,273	Automatic Example Queries for Ad Hoc Databases	2011	SIGMOD