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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
9.2076835e-05
Overall Rank
2,002 | 86.55%
DOI
10.14778/3461535.3461539
PDF
Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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
981 Cardinality Estimation in DBMS: A Comprehensive Benchmark Evaluation 2022 VLDB 0.00012713454
2,209 Lero: A Learning-to-Rank Query Optimizer 2023 VLDB 8.8360101e-05
2,342 Learned Cardinality Estimation: An In-depth Study 2022 SIGMOD 8.6074783e-05
2,583 Fauce: Fast and Accurate Deep Ensembles with Uncertainty for Cardinality Estimation 2021 VLDB 8.2589842e-05
2,844 FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries 2023 SIGMOD 7.9446987e-05
3,327 Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads 2023 VLDB 7.4233639e-05
3,742 FACE: A Normalizing Flow based Cardinality Estimator 2022 VLDB 7.0564546e-05
4,240 LEON: A New Framework for ML-Aided Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 6.7064546e-05
4,299 ALECE: An Attention-based Learned Cardinality Estimator for SPJ Queries on Dynamic Workloads 2024 VLDB 6.6766173e-05
4,854 LpBound: Pessimistic Cardinality Estimation using ℓp-Norms of Degree Sequences 2025 SIGMOD 6.3775929e-05
4,945 Debunking the Myth of Join Ordering: Toward Robust SQL Analytics 2025 SIGMOD 6.3418058e-05
5,062 Fine-Grained Modeling and Optimization for Intelligent Resource Management in Big Data Processing 2022 VLDB 6.2896995e-05
5,216 Stage: Query Execution Time Prediction in Amazon Redshift 2024 SIGMOD 6.2218868e-05
5,224 SafeBound: A Practical System for Generating Cardinality Bounds 2023 SIGMOD 6.2197808e-05
5,438 Eraser: Eliminating Performance Regression on Learned Query Optimizer 2024 VLDB 6.1278045e-05
5,630 Sample-Efficient Cardinality Estimation Using Geometric Deep Learning 2024 VLDB 6.056758e-05
5,700 PilotScope: Steering Databases with Machine Learning Drivers 2024 VLDB 6.028998e-05
5,715 Detect, Distill and Update: Learned DB Systems Facing Out of Distribution Data 2023 SIGMOD 6.0178585e-05
6,408 A Unified Transferable Model for ML-Enhanced DBMS 2022 CIDR 5.7921918e-05
6,664 Speeding Up End-to-end Query Execution via Learning-based Progressive Cardinality Estimation 2023 SIGMOD 5.715134e-05
6,824 ASM: Harmonizing Autoregressive Model, Sampling, and Multi-dimensional Statistics Merging for Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 5.670071e-05
7,219 Refactoring Index Tuning Process with Benefit Estimation 2024 VLDB 5.5808392e-05
7,356 PerfGuard: Deploying ML-for-Systems without Performance Regressions, Almost! 2021 VLDB 5.5421826e-05
7,426 Learning to be a Statistician: Learned Estimator for Number of Distinct Values 2022 VLDB 5.5295692e-05
7,572 Convolution and Cross-Correlation of Count Sketches Enables Fast Cardinality Estimation of Multi-Join Queries 2024 SIGMOD 5.492682e-05
7,653 Disclosure-Compliant Query Answering 2024 SIGMOD 5.4746904e-05
8,009 A Spark Optimizer for Adaptive, Fine-Grained Parameter Tuning 2024 VLDB 5.4063491e-05
8,373 GenJoin: Conditional Generative Plan-to-Plan Query Optimizer that Learns from Subplan Hints 2026 SIGMOD 5.3427119e-05
8,638 LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.2965922e-05
8,888 Spatial Query Optimization With Learning 2024 VLDB 5.2543468e-05
8,952 Machine Unlearning in Learned Databases: An Experimental Analysis 2024 SIGMOD 5.2517414e-05
9,010 ByteCard: Enhancing ByteDance’s Data Warehouse with Learned Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 5.2371313e-05
9,011 Learning-based Property Estimation with Polynomials 2024 SIGMOD 5.2371313e-05
9,381 Efficient and Effective Cardinality Estimation for Skyline Family 2023 SIGMOD 5.1843659e-05
9,489 LpBound in Action: Cardinality Estimation with One-Sided Guarantees 2025 SIGMOD 5.168414e-05
9,556 Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement 2025 SIGMOD 5.1580326e-05
9,900 Approximate Sketches 2024 SIGMOD 5.1110481e-05
9,917 Cardinality Estimation for Similarity Search on High-Dimensional Data Objects: The Impact of Reference Objects 2025 VLDB 5.1079647e-05
9,962 Graph Transformers for Query Plan Representation: Potentials and Challenges 2025 VLDB 5.1014161e-05
9,983 Selectivity Estimation for Queries Containing Predicates over Set-Valued Attributes 2023 SIGMOD 5.1007226e-05
10,187 Path-centric Cardinality Estimation for Subgraph Matching 2025 VLDB 5.0628015e-05
10,222 PRICE: A Pretrained Model for Cross-Database Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 5.0560976e-05
10,343 An Elephant Under The Microscope: Analyzing The Interaction Of Optimizer Components In PostgreSQL 2025 SIGMOD 5.0176429e-05
10,703 Practical Parameterized Query Optimization via Efficient Plan Reuse and List-wise Ranking 2026 SIGMOD 4.9769913e-05
10,745 AQD: Online Adaptive Query Dispatcher for HTAP Databases 2026 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
10,751 OBELISK: Efficient Offline Query Planning with Bayesian Optimization-Informed Language Model Reasoning 2026 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
11,193 FAAQP: Fast and Accurate Approximate Query Processing based on Bitmap-augmented Sum-Product Network 2025 SIGMOD 4.9769913e-05
11,265 ACE: A Cardinality Estimator for Set-Valued Queries 2025 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
11,298 Cardinality Estimation for Having-Clauses 2025 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
11,449 LEAP: A Low-cost Spark SQL Query Optimizer using Pairwise Comparison 2025 VLDB 4.9769913e-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 0.0023943337
15 How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2016 VLDB 0.00061067652
23 Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark 2015 SIGMOD 0.00055384955
40 The Case for Learned Index Structures 2018 SIGMOD 0.00046363107
78 Automatic Database Management System Tuning Through Large-scale Machine Learning 2017 SIGMOD 0.00036675568
85 Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 0.00035876108
91 On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results 1991 SIGMOD 0.00034748721
98 LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer 2001 VLDB 0.00034099838
103 Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption 1997 VLDB 0.00033884854
144 Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer 2019 VLDB 0.00029090793
286 Selectivity Estimation using Probabilistic Models 2001 SIGMOD 0.00022112534
318 DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries! 2020 VLDB 0.00021166957
371 STHoles: A Multidimensional Workload-Aware Histogram 2001 SIGMOD 0.00019822444
406 Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation 2020 VLDB 0.00019050182
510 NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables 2021 VLDB 0.00017059914
688 Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling 2017 CIDR 0.00014749318
691 Selectivity Estimation for Range Predicates using Lightweight Models 2019 VLDB 0.00014737455
700 Independence is Good: Dependency-Based Histogram Synopses for High-Dimensional Data 2001 SIGMOD 0.00014675903
795 Random Sampling over Joins Revisited 2018 SIGMOD 0.00013934719
867 Approximating Multi-Dimensional Aggregate Range Queries Over Real Attributes 2000 SIGMOD 0.00013376165
869 Learning Multi-dimensional Indexes 2020 SIGMOD 0.00013363241
1,058 Lightweight Graphical Models for Selectivity Estimation Without Independence Assumptions 2011 VLDB 0.00012224038
1,065 Are We Ready For Learned Cardinality Estimation? 2021 VLDB 0.00012202293
1,432 Towards a Learning Optimizer for Shared Clouds 2019 VLDB 0.00010676754
1,509 Self-Tuning, GPU-Accelerated Kernel Density Models for Multidimensional Selectivity Estimation 2015 SIGMOD 0.00010436933
2,028 Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time 2017 SIGMOD 9.1584244e-05
2,217 Estimating Join Selectivities using Bandwidth-Optimized Kernel Density Models 2017 VLDB 8.8151982e-05
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# Overall Rank Paper Year Venue
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4 3,742 FACE: A Normalizing Flow based Cardinality Estimator 2022 VLDB
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6 1,065 Are We Ready For Learned Cardinality Estimation? 2021 VLDB
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