A Probabilistic Optimization Framework for the Empty-Answer Problem
Summary: Introduces a probabilistic optimization framework for the empty-answer problem to drive interactive query relaxation. It optimizes objectives to suggest relaxations with fewer predicates, offering optimal and approximate solvers and empirical gains over baselines. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
Authors
- 1. Davide Mottin (University of Trento)
- 2. Alice Marascu (IBM Research-Ireland)
- 3. Senjuti Basu Roy (University of Washington Tacoma)
- 4. Gautam Das (Qatar Computing Research Institute; University of Texas)
- 5. Themis Palpanas (University of Trento)
- 6. Yannis Velegrakis (University of Trento)
BibTeX Citation
@article{mottin_vldb13,
title = {{A Probabilistic Optimization Framework for the Empty-Answer Problem}},
author = {Mottin, Davide and Marascu, Alice and Roy, Senjuti Basu and Das, Gautam and Palpanas, Themis and Velegrakis, Yannis},
journal = {PVLDB},
series = {{VLDB} '13},
volume = {6},
number = {14},
pages = {1762--1775},
doi = {10.14778/2556549.2556560},
url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/2556549.2556560},
year = {2013}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 10 of 10 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,954 | Exemplar Queries: Give me an Example of What You Need | 2014 | VLDB | 9.31794e-05 |
| 5,354 | Rudolf: Interactive Rule Refinement System for Fraud Detection | 2016 | VLDB | 6.1633336e-05 |
| 7,407 | EFQ: Why-Not Answer Polynomials in Action | 2015 | VLDB | 5.534824e-05 |
| 7,999 | Searching with XQ: the eXemplar Query Search Engine | 2014 | SIGMOD | 5.4102724e-05 |
| 10,232 | Graph Exploration: From Users to Large Graphs | 2017 | SIGMOD | 5.0568888e-05 |
| 10,542 | Aegis: A Correlation-Based Data Masking Advisor for Data-Sharing Ecosystems | 2026 | SIGMOD | 4.9793485e-05 |
| 12,090 | Recommending Deployment Strategies for Collaborative Tasks | 2020 | SIGMOD | 4.9793485e-05 |
| 12,147 | Recommending Deployment Strategies in Crowdsourcing Platforms | 2019 | SIGMOD | 4.9793485e-05 |
| 13,910 | IQR: An Interactive Query Relaxation System for the Empty-Answer Problem | 2014 | SIGMOD | - |
| 13,950 | The Trento Big Data Platform for Public Administration and Large Companies: Use cases and Opportunities | 2013 | VLDB | - |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 5 of 5 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 391 | Why Not? | 2009 | SIGMOD | 0.00019238698 |
| 474 | Automated Ranking of Database Query Results | 2003 | CIDR | 0.00017672562 |
| 791 | How to ConQueR Why-Not Questions | 2010 | SIGMOD | 0.00013976192 |
| 1,643 | Relaxing Join and Selection Queries | 2006 | VLDB | 0.00010006399 |
| 1,886 | Probabilistic Ranking of Database Query Results | 2004 | VLDB | 9.4339749e-05 |
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| 1 | 1,865 | A Probabilistic Framework for Vague Queries and Imprecise Information in Databases | 1990 | VLDB |
| 2 | 8,363 | Probabilistic Database Summarization for Interactive Data Exploration | 2017 | VLDB |
| 3 | 3,214 | Efficient and Provable Multi-Query Optimization | 2017 | PODS |
| 4 | 8,906 | A Query Engine for Probabilistic Preferences | 2018 | SIGMOD |
| 5 | 1,886 | Probabilistic Ranking of Database Query Results | 2004 | VLDB |
| 6 | 3,769 | Optimizing MPF Queries: Decision Support and Probabilistic Inference | 2007 | SIGMOD |
| 7 | 1,643 | Relaxing Join and Selection Queries | 2006 | VLDB |
| 8 | 2,181 | Probabilistic Optimization of Top N Queries | 1999 | VLDB |
| 9 | 13,910 | IQR: An Interactive Query Relaxation System for the Empty-Answer Problem | 2014 | SIGMOD |
| 10 | 51 | Efficient Query Evaluation on Probabilistic Databases | 2004 | VLDB |