FILM: a Fully Learned Index for Larger-than-Memory Databases

Summary: FILM: a fully learned tree index for larger-than-memory DBs using tiny approximation models to index across memory+disk, reducing in-memory index size by orders of magnitude versus anti-caching. An adaptive LRU piggybacked on queries avoids swap overhead, improving query latency and insertion performance. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h97b8cc3266aedc7d
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2023
Pagerank: 6.1435108e-05
Overall Rank: 5,405 | 63.68%
DOI: 10.14778/3570690.3570704
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Chaohong Ma (Renmin University of China)
2. Xiaohui Yu (York University)
3. Yifan Li (York University)
4. Xiaofeng Meng (Renmin University of China)
5. Aishan Maoliniyazi (Renmin University of China)

BibTeX Citation

@article{ma_vldb23,
        title = {{FILM: a Fully Learned Index for Larger-than-Memory Databases}},
        author = {Ma, Chaohong and Yu, Xiaohui and Li, Yifan and Meng, Xiaofeng and Maoliniyazi, Aishan},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '23},
        volume = {16},
        number = {3},
        pages = {561--573},
        doi = {10.14778/3570690.3570704},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3570690.3570704},
        year = {2023}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 12 of 12 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
3,621	Learned Index: A Comprehensive Experimental Evaluation	2023	VLDB	7.1510804e-05
6,613	Making In-Memory Learned Indexes Efficient on Disk	2024	SIGMOD	5.7326443e-05
6,787	SALI: A Scalable Adaptive Learned Index Framework based on Probability Models	2023	SIGMOD	5.6810904e-05
6,867	Accelerating String-key Learned Index Structures via Memoization-based Incremental Training	2024	VLDB	5.6581046e-05
8,208	Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Dynamic Learned Indexes	2024	VLDB	5.3761984e-05
9,601	Can Learned Indexes be Built Efficiently? A Deep Dive into Sampling Trade-offs	2024	SIGMOD	5.153951e-05
9,782	Understanding Robustness Issues of Updatable Learned Indexes: [Experiments & Analysis]	2026	SIGMOD	5.129066e-05
10,350	Replace or Augment: Rethinking the Role of Learned Indexes in Relational Databases	2027	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
10,486	LINE: A Learned Index with Group-Enhanced Leaves and Cache-Optimized Inner Tree	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
10,495	NeurBench: A Benchmark Suite for Learned Database Components with Drift Modeling: [Experiments & Analysis]	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
10,586	High Performance or Low Memory? An Updatable Learned Index Framework for Time-Space Tradeoff	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
11,131	VEGA: An Active-tuning Learned Index with Group-Wise Learning Granularity	2025	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 22 of 22 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
40	The Case for Learned Index Structures	2018	SIGMOD	0.00046363107
234	TiDB: A Raft-based HTAP Database	2020	VLDB	0.00023756332
318	DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries!	2020	VLDB	0.00021166957
422	ALEX: An Updatable Adaptive Learned Index	2020	SIGMOD	0.00018488849
458	The PGM-index: a fully-dynamic compressed learned index with provable worst-case bounds	2020	VLDB	0.00017880664
635	ERMIA: Fast Memory-Optimized Database System for Heterogeneous Workloads	2016	SIGMOD	0.00015362118
729	Anti-Caching: A New Approach to Database Management System Architecture	2013	VLDB	0.00014417679
768	FITing-Tree: A Data-aware Index Structure	2019	SIGMOD	0.00014107655
835	Benchmarking Learned Indexes	2021	VLDB	0.00013575971
869	Learning Multi-dimensional Indexes	2020	SIGMOD	0.00013363241
907	Data Blocks: Hybrid OLTP and OLAP on Compressed Storage using both Vectorization and Compilation	2016	SIGMOD	0.00013157412
960	Reducing the Storage Overhead of Main-Memory OLTP Databases with Hybrid Indexes	2016	SIGMOD	0.0001283613
1,321	Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing: A Survey	2017	SIGMOD	0.00011038031
1,440	LISA: A Learned Index Structure for Spatial Data	2020	SIGMOD	0.00010638444
1,506	BF-Tree: Approximate Tree Indexing	2014	VLDB	0.00010448376
1,524	Trekking Through Siberia: Managing Cold Data in a Memory-Optimized Database	2014	VLDB	0.0001036095
1,525	Updatable Learned Index with Precise Positions	2021	VLDB	0.00010355133
1,877	Effectively Learning Spatial Indices	2020	VLDB	9.4498401e-05
2,270	FINEdex: A Fine-grained Learned Index Scheme for Scalable and Concurrent Memory Systems	2022	VLDB	8.7166469e-05
2,922	Parallel Replication across Formats in SAP HANA for Scaling Out Mixed OLTP/OLAP Workloads	2017	VLDB	7.8496897e-05
2,998	F1 Lightning: HTAP as a Service	2020	VLDB	7.7667188e-05
6,819	Liquid: Unifying Nearline and Offline Big Data Integration	2015	CIDR	5.6713167e-05

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