Tiresias: The Database Oracle for How-To Queries

Summary: First system for how-to queries (reverse data management): TiQL-to-MIP translation yields SQL-generated variables and constraints on an RDBMS. It adds data-aware optimizations and divide-and-conquer MIP decomposition, delivering strong TPC-H performance. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: hc7cca519237427ea
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2012
Pagerank: 0.0001225364
Overall Rank: 1,055 | 92.93%
DOI: 10.1145/2213836.2213875

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Alexandra Meliou (University of Washington)
2. Dan Suciu (University of Washington)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{meliou_sigmod12,
        title = {{Tiresias: The Database Oracle for How-To Queries}},
        author = {Meliou, Alexandra and Suciu, Dan},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '12},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/2213836.2213875},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2213836.2213875},
        year = {2012}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 34 of 34 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
467	Design and Implementation of the LogicBlox System	2015	SIGMOD	0.00017740891
2,053	Messing Up with BART: Error Generation for Evaluating Data-Cleaning Algorithms	2016	VLDB	9.1054597e-05
2,328	Causal Relational Learning	2020	SIGMOD	8.6206869e-05
2,473	Complaint-driven Training Data Debugging for Query 2.0	2020	SIGMOD	8.3984284e-05
2,847	Data Provenance at Internet Scale: Architecture, Experiences, and the Road Ahead	2017	CIDR	7.9235089e-05
3,292	Searchlight: Enabling Integrated Search and Exploration over Large Multidimensional Data	2015	VLDB	7.4344621e-05
4,577	HYPER: Hypothetical Reasoning With What-If and How-To Queries Using a Probabilistic Causal Approach	2022	SIGMOD	6.5111757e-05
4,742	Going Beyond Provenance: Explaining Query Answers with Pattern-based Counterbalances	2019	SIGMOD	6.4285195e-05
4,833	Stage: Query Execution Time Prediction in Amazon Redshift	2024	SIGMOD	6.3834856e-05
4,852	QFix: Diagnosing Errors through Query Histories	2017	SIGMOD	6.3680596e-05
4,943	Efficient Answering of Historical What-if Queries	2022	SIGMOD	6.3304729e-05
5,273	Enabling SQL-based Training Data Debugging for Federated Learning	2022	VLDB	6.1887043e-05
5,374	Why Not Yet: Fixing a Top-k Ranking that Is Not Fair to Individuals	2023	VLDB	6.140487e-05
5,662	Lineage-driven Fault Injection	2015	SIGMOD	6.0298936e-05
6,534	Query Refinement for Diverse Top-k Selection	2024	SIGMOD	5.7356177e-05
6,718	Toward Interpretable and Actionable Data Analysis with Explanations and Causality	2022	VLDB	5.6843134e-05
6,728	Selective Provenance for Datalog Programs Using Top-K Queries	2015	VLDB	5.6812425e-05
6,788	Quantum Databases	2013	CIDR	5.6652779e-05
6,789	Tiresias: A Demonstration of How-To Queries	2012	SIGMOD	5.6652658e-05
6,982	Scalable Package Queries in Relational Database Systems	2016	VLDB	5.6121014e-05
7,252	Hypothetical Reasoning via Provenance Abstraction	2019	SIGMOD	5.5583413e-05
7,404	Aggregated Deletion Propagation for Counting Conjunctive Query Answers	2021	VLDB	5.5178575e-05
7,443	A Unified Approach for Resilience and Causal Responsibility with Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and LP Relaxations	2023	SIGMOD	5.5117047e-05
7,932	Complaint-Driven Training Data Debugging at Interactive Speeds	2022	SIGMOD	5.4074941e-05
8,192	Fast and Reliable Missing Data Contingency Analysis with Predicate-Constraints	2020	SIGMOD	5.3646457e-05
8,788	Is Integer Linear Programming All You Need for Deletion Propagation? A Unified and Practical Approach for Generalized Deletion Propagation	2025	VLDB	5.263678e-05
9,432	PackageBuilder: From Tuples to Packages	2014	VLDB	5.1653777e-05
9,630	Equivalence-Invariant Algebraic Provenance for Hyperplane Update Queries	2020	SIGMOD	5.1363807e-05
10,874	Efficient Query Repair for Aggregate Constraints	2026	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
11,057	GDPView: An Interactive Interface that Unifies Variants of Deletion Propagation (DP)	2026	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
11,189	Ultraverse: An Efficient What-if Analysis Framework for Software Applications Interacting with Database Systems	2025	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
12,307	Constraint-based Explanation and Repair of Filter-based Transformations	2018	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
12,552	A Provenance Framework for Data-Dependent Process Analysis	2014	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
13,965	PackageBuilder: Querying for packages of tuples	2014	SIGMOD	-

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 8 of 8 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
17	Provenance Semirings	2007	PODS	0.00059660827
245	MCDB: A Monte Carlo Approach to Managing Uncertain Data	2008	SIGMOD	0.00023188414
340	Trio: A System for Data, Uncertainty, and Lineage	2006	VLDB	0.00020548826
811	Provenance for Aggregate Queries	2011	PODS	0.00013713646
2,422	Data Generation using Declarative Constraints	2011	SIGMOD	8.4785012e-05
2,549	From Complete to Incomplete Information and Back	2007	SIGMOD	8.2889756e-05
2,962	Reverse Data Management	2011	VLDB	7.7949147e-05
3,439	Relational Lenses: A Language for Updatable Views	2006	PODS	7.2803328e-05

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