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FLAT: Fast, Lightweight and Accurate Method for Cardinality Estimation

Summary: FLAT introduces FSPN, an adaptive graphical model combining independent and conditional factorization to capture attribute correlations. It delivers fast near-linear probability computation, compact models, incremental updates, and highly accurate single-table and join cardinalities. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID
h97e8e304d5ee7dfd
Venue
VLDB
Year
2021
Pagerank
9.2065719e-05
Overall Rank
2,004 | 86.53%
DOI
10.14778/3461535.3461539

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@article{zhu_vldb21,
        title = {{FLAT: Fast, Lightweight and Accurate Method for Cardinality Estimation}},
        author = {Zhu, Rong and Wu, Ziniu and Han, Yuxing and Zeng, Kai and Pfadler, Andreas and Qian, Zhengping and Zhou, Jingren and Cui, Bin},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '21},
        volume = {14},
        number = {9},
        pages = {1489--1502},
        doi = {10.14778/3461535.3461539},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3461535.3461539},
        year = {2021}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 51 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
982 Cardinality Estimation in DBMS: A Comprehensive Benchmark Evaluation 2022 VLDB 0.00012714044
2,210 Lero: A Learning-to-Rank Query Optimizer 2023 VLDB 8.8257742e-05
2,342 Learned Cardinality Estimation: An In-depth Study 2022 SIGMOD 8.6060437e-05
2,583 Fauce: Fast and Accurate Deep Ensembles with Uncertainty for Cardinality Estimation 2021 VLDB 8.2589758e-05
2,846 FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries 2023 SIGMOD 7.9453616e-05
3,327 Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads 2023 VLDB 7.4207879e-05
3,741 FACE: A Normalizing Flow based Cardinality Estimator 2022 VLDB 7.0594076e-05
4,258 LEON: A New Framework for ML-Aided Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 6.6994722e-05
4,311 ALECE: An Attention-based Learned Cardinality Estimator for SPJ Queries on Dynamic Workloads 2024 VLDB 6.6727978e-05
4,852 LpBound: Pessimistic Cardinality Estimation using ℓp-Norms of Degree Sequences 2025 SIGMOD 6.3806134e-05
4,950 Debunking the Myth of Join Ordering: Toward Robust SQL Analytics 2025 SIGMOD 6.3421691e-05
5,058 Fine-Grained Modeling and Optimization for Intelligent Resource Management in Big Data Processing 2022 VLDB 6.2926774e-05
5,214 Stage: Query Execution Time Prediction in Amazon Redshift 2024 SIGMOD 6.2248104e-05
5,219 SafeBound: A Practical System for Generating Cardinality Bounds 2023 SIGMOD 6.222726e-05
5,456 Eraser: Eliminating Performance Regression on Learned Query Optimizer 2024 VLDB 6.1239873e-05
5,649 Sample-Efficient Cardinality Estimation Using Geometric Deep Learning 2024 VLDB 6.052326e-05
5,716 Detect, Distill and Update: Learned DB Systems Facing Out of Distribution Data 2023 SIGMOD 6.0194657e-05
5,871 PilotScope: Steering Databases with Machine Learning Drivers 2024 VLDB 5.9639223e-05
6,416 A Unified Transferable Model for ML-Enhanced DBMS 2022 CIDR 5.7920805e-05
6,660 Speeding Up End-to-end Query Execution via Learning-based Progressive Cardinality Estimation 2023 SIGMOD 5.7178404e-05
6,818 ASM: Harmonizing Autoregressive Model, Sampling, and Multi-dimensional Statistics Merging for Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 5.672718e-05
7,217 Refactoring Index Tuning Process with Benefit Estimation 2024 VLDB 5.5834823e-05
7,363 PerfGuard: Deploying ML-for-Systems without Performance Regressions, Almost! 2021 VLDB 5.5418564e-05
7,429 Learning to be a Statistician: Learned Estimator for Number of Distinct Values 2022 VLDB 5.5300853e-05
7,566 Convolution and Cross-Correlation of Count Sketches Enables Fast Cardinality Estimation of Multi-Join Queries 2024 SIGMOD 5.4952834e-05
7,647 Disclosure-Compliant Query Answering 2024 SIGMOD 5.4772833e-05
8,004 A Spark Optimizer for Adaptive, Fine-Grained Parameter Tuning 2024 VLDB 5.4089097e-05
8,879 Spatial Query Optimization With Learning 2024 VLDB 5.2568354e-05
8,947 Machine Unlearning in Learned Databases: An Experimental Analysis 2024 SIGMOD 5.2532248e-05
9,012 ByteCard: Enhancing ByteDance’s Data Warehouse with Learned Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 5.2375369e-05
9,013 Learning-based Property Estimation with Polynomials 2024 SIGMOD 5.2375369e-05
9,300 GenJoin: Conditional Generative Plan-to-Plan Query Optimizer that Learns from Subplan Hints 2026 SIGMOD 5.1987909e-05
9,372 Efficient and Effective Cardinality Estimation for Skyline Family 2023 SIGMOD 5.1868213e-05
9,478 LpBound in Action: Cardinality Estimation with One-Sided Guarantees 2025 SIGMOD 5.1708619e-05
9,546 Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement 2025 SIGMOD 5.1604755e-05
9,610 LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.1526493e-05
9,893 Approximate Sketches 2024 SIGMOD 5.1134687e-05
9,910 Cardinality Estimation for Similarity Search on High-Dimensional Data Objects: The Impact of Reference Objects 2025 VLDB 5.1103839e-05
9,956 Graph Transformers for Query Plan Representation: Potentials and Challenges 2025 VLDB 5.1038322e-05
9,976 Selectivity Estimation for Queries Containing Predicates over Set-Valued Attributes 2023 SIGMOD 5.1031384e-05
10,184 Path-centric Cardinality Estimation for Subgraph Matching 2025 VLDB 5.0651993e-05
10,216 PRICE: A Pretrained Model for Cross-Database Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 5.0584922e-05
10,336 An Elephant Under The Microscope: Analyzing The Interaction Of Optimizer Components In PostgreSQL 2025 SIGMOD 5.0200193e-05
10,693 Practical Parameterized Query Optimization via Efficient Plan Reuse and List-wise Ranking 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,735 AQD: Online Adaptive Query Dispatcher for HTAP Databases 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,741 OBELISK: Efficient Offline Query Planning with Bayesian Optimization-Informed Language Model Reasoning 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
11,184 FAAQP: Fast and Accurate Approximate Query Processing based on Bitmap-augmented Sum-Product Network 2025 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
11,257 ACE: A Cardinality Estimator for Set-Valued Queries 2025 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
11,290 Cardinality Estimation for Having-Clauses 2025 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
11,443 LEAP: A Low-cost Spark SQL Query Optimizer using Pairwise Comparison 2025 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 27 of 27 cited papers.

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

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
1 Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System 1979 SIGMOD 0.0023947656
15 How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2016 VLDB 0.00061066921
23 Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark 2015 SIGMOD 0.00055406774
40 The Case for Learned Index Structures 2018 SIGMOD 0.00046284649
78 Automatic Database Management System Tuning Through Large-scale Machine Learning 2017 SIGMOD 0.00036684414
85 Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 0.00035864347
91 On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results 1991 SIGMOD 0.0003475226
98 LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer 2001 VLDB 0.00034106982
103 Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption 1997 VLDB 0.00033894985
145 Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer 2019 VLDB 0.0002908188
286 Selectivity Estimation using Probabilistic Models 2001 SIGMOD 0.0002211981
318 DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries! 2020 VLDB 0.00021167555
371 STHoles: A Multidimensional Workload-Aware Histogram 2001 SIGMOD 0.00019829769
406 Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation 2020 VLDB 0.00019045544
512 NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables 2021 VLDB 0.00017050173
688 Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling 2017 CIDR 0.00014753664
692 Selectivity Estimation for Range Predicates using Lightweight Models 2019 VLDB 0.00014741011
701 Independence is Good: Dependency-Based Histogram Synopses for High-Dimensional Data 2001 SIGMOD 0.00014680907
795 Random Sampling over Joins Revisited 2018 SIGMOD 0.00013938779
866 Approximating Multi-Dimensional Aggregate Range Queries Over Real Attributes 2000 SIGMOD 0.00013381261
868 Learning Multi-dimensional Indexes 2020 SIGMOD 0.00013354403
1,060 Lightweight Graphical Models for Selectivity Estimation Without Independence Assumptions 2011 VLDB 0.00012224575
1,064 Are We Ready For Learned Cardinality Estimation? 2021 VLDB 0.00012202282
1,433 Towards a Learning Optimizer for Shared Clouds 2019 VLDB 0.00010677711
1,508 Self-Tuning, GPU-Accelerated Kernel Density Models for Multidimensional Selectivity Estimation 2015 SIGMOD 0.00010440205
2,027 Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time 2017 SIGMOD 9.1618139e-05
2,216 Estimating Join Selectivities using Bandwidth-Optimized Kernel Density Models 2017 VLDB 8.8177753e-05
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4 5,649 Sample-Efficient Cardinality Estimation Using Geometric Deep Learning 2024 VLDB
5 3,741 FACE: A Normalizing Flow based Cardinality Estimator 2022 VLDB
6 1,064 Are We Ready For Learned Cardinality Estimation? 2021 VLDB
7 6,660 Speeding Up End-to-end Query Execution via Learning-based Progressive Cardinality Estimation 2023 SIGMOD
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9 982 Cardinality Estimation in DBMS: A Comprehensive Benchmark Evaluation 2022 VLDB
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