Analytic window query is a commonly used query in the relational databases. It answers the aggregations of data over a sliding window. For example, to get the average prices of a stock for each day. However, it is not supported in the spatial databases. Because the spatial data are not in a one-dimension space, there is no straightforward way to extend the original analytic window query to spatial databases. But these queries are useful and meaningful. For example, to find the average number of visits for all the POIs in the circle with a fixed radius for each POI as the centre. In this paper, we define the aggregate analytic window query over spatial data and propose algorithms for grid index and tree-index. We also analyze the complexity of the algorithms to prove they are efficient and practical.
The problem of extracting consistent information from relational databases violating integrity constraints on numerical data is addressed. In particular, aggregate constraints defined as linear inequalities on aggregate-sum queries on input data are considered. The notion of repair as consistent set of updates at attribute-value level is exploited, and the characterization of several complexity issues related to repairing data and computing consistent query answers is provided.
Window aggregates are ubiquitous in stream processing. In Azure Stream Analytics (ASA), a stream processing service hosted by Microsoft's Azure cloud, we see many customer queries that contain aggregate functions (such as MIN and MAX) over multiple correlated windows (e.g., tumbling windows of length five minutes and ten minutes) defined on the same event stream. In this paper, we present a cost-based optimization framework for optimizing such queries by sharing computation among multiple windows. In particular, we introduce the notion of factor windows, which are auxiliary windows that are no…
Natural language question-answering over RDF data has received widespread attention. Although there have been several studies that have dealt with a small number of aggregate queries, they have many restrictions (i.e., interactive information, controlled question or query template). Thus far, there has been no natural language querying mechanism that can process general aggregate queries over RDF data. Therefore, we propose a framework called NLAQ (Natural Language Aggregate Query). First, we propose a novel algorithm to automatically understand a users query intention, which mainly contains s…
Differential privacy (DP) is the state-of-the-art and rigorous notion of privacy for answering aggregate database queries while preserving the privacy of sensitive information in the data. In today's era of data analysis, however, it poses new challenges for users to understand the trends and anomalies observed in the query results: Is the unexpected answer due to the data itself, or is it due to the extra noise that must be added to preserve DP? In the second case, even the observation made by the users on query results may be wrong. In the first case, can we still mine interesting explanatio…
It is common practice for data scientists to acquire and integrate disparate data sources to achieve higher quality results. But even with a perfectly cleaned and merged data set, two fundamental questions remain: (1) is the integrated data set complete and (2) what is the impact of any unknown (i.e., unobserved) data on query results? In this work, we develop and analyze techniques to estimate the impact of the unknown data (a.k.a., unknown unknowns) on simple aggregate queries. The key idea is that the overlap between different data sources enables us to estimate the number and values of the…
We present a system for summarization and interactive exploration of high-valued aggregate query answers to make a large set of possible answers more informative to the user. Our system outputs a set of clusters on the high-valued query answers showing their common properties such that the clusters are diverse as much as possible to avoid repeating information, and cover a certain number of top original answers as indicated by the user. Further, the system facilitates interactive exploration of the query answers by helping the user (i) choose combinations of parameters for clustering, (ii) ins…
Range aggregate queries (RAQs) are an integral part of many real-world applications, where, often, fast and approximate answers for the queries are desired. Recent work has studied answering RAQs using machine learning models, where a model of the data is learned to answer the queries. However, such modelling choices fail to utilize any query specific information. To capture such information, we observe that RAQs can be represented by query functions, which are functions that take a query instance (i.e., a specific RAQ) as an input and output its corresponding answer. Using this representation…
Analytic function, also called window function, is to query the aggregation of data over a sliding window. For example, a simple query over the online stock platform is to return the average price of a stock of the last three days. These functions are commonly used features in SQL databases. They are supported in most of the commercial databases. With the increasing usage of cloud data infra and machine learning technology, the frequency of queries with analytic window functions rises. Some analytic functions only require const space in memory to store the state, such as SUM, AVG, while others…
While traditional data-management systems focus on evaluating single, ad-hoc queries over static data sets in a centralized setting, several emerging applications require (possibly, continuous) answers to queries on dynamic data that is widely distributed and constantly updated. Furthermore, such query answers often need to discount data that is "stale", and operate solely on a sliding window of recent data arrivals (e.g., data updates occurring over the last 24 hours). Such distributed data streaming applications mandate novel algorithmic solutions that are both time- and space-efficient (to …
Location based services (LBS) have become very popular in recent years. They range from map services (e.g., Google Maps) that store geographic locations of points of interests, to online social networks (e.g., WeChat, Sina Weibo, FourSquare) that leverage user geographic locations to enable various recommendation functions. The public query interfaces of these services may be abstractly modeled as a kNN interface over a database of two dimensional points on a plane: given an arbitrary query point, the system returns the k points in the database that are nearest to the query point. In this pape…
Nowadays, many web databases "hidden" behind their restrictive search interfaces (e.g., Amazon, eBay) contain rich and valuable information that is of significant interests to various third parties. Recent studies have demonstrated the possibility of estimating/tracking certain aggregate queries over dynamic hidden web databases. Nonetheless, tracking all possible aggregate query answers to report interesting findings (i.e., exceptions), while still adhering to the stringent query-count limitations enforced by many hidden web databases providers, is very challenging. In this paper, we develop …
Sample-based approximate query processing (AQP) suffers from many pitfalls such as the inability to answer very selective queries and unreliable confidence intervals when sample sizes are small. Recent research presented an intriguing solution of combining materialized, pre-computed aggregates with sampling for accurate and more reliable AQP. We explore this solution in detail in this work and propose an AQP physical design called PASS, or Precomputation-Assisted Stratified Sampling. PASS builds a tree of partial aggregates that cover different partitions of the dataset. The leaf nodes of this…
A knowledge graph (KG) manages large-scale and real-world facts as a big graph in a schema-flexible manner. Aggregate query is a fundamental query over KGs, e.g., "what is the average price of cars produced in Germany?". Despite its importance, answering aggregate queries on KGs has received little attention in the literature. Aggregate queries can be supported based on factoid queries, e.g., "find all cars produced in Germany", by applying an additional aggregate operation on factoid queries' answers. However, this straightforward method is challenging because both the accuracy and efficiency…
In this work we present in-network techniques to improve the efficiency of spatial aggregate queries. Such queries are very common in a sensornet setting, demanding more targeted techniques for their handling. Our approach constructs and maintains multi-resolution cube hierarchies inside the network, which can be constructed in a distributed fashion. In case of failures, recovery can also be performed with in-network decisions. In this paper we demonstrate how in-network cube hierarchies can be used to summarize sensor data, and how they can be exploited to improve the efficiency of spatial ag…
As individual traffic and public transport in cities are changing, city authorities need to analyze urban geospatial data to improve transportation and infrastructure. To that end, they highly rely on spatial aggregation queries that extract summarized information from point data (e.g., Uber rides) contained in a given polygonal region (e.g., a city neighborhood). To support such queries, current analysis tools either allow only predefined aggregates on predefined regions and are thus unsuitable for exploratory analyses, or access the raw data to compute aggregate results on-the-fly, which sev…
In relational DBMS, window functions have been widely used to facilitate data analytics. Surprisingly, while similar concepts have been employed for graph analytics, there has been no explicit notions of graph window analytic functions. In this paper, we formally introduce window queries for graph analytics. In such queries, for each vertex, the analysis is performed on a window of vertices defined based on the graph structure. In particular, we identify two instantiations, namely the k-hop window and the topological window. We develop two novel indices, Dense Block index (DBIndex) and Inherit…
Many databases on the web are "hidden" behind (i.e., accessible only through) their restrictive, form-like, search interfaces. Recent studies have shown that it is possible to estimate aggregate query answers over such hidden web databases by issuing a small number of carefully designed search queries through the restrictive web interface. A problem with these existing work, however, is that they all assume the underlying database to be static, while most real-world web databases (e.g., Amazon, eBay) are frequently updated. In this paper, we study the novel problem of estimating/tracking aggre…
The problem of recovering (count and sum) range queries over multidimensional data only on the basis of aggregate information on such data is addressed. This problem can be formalized as follows. Suppose that a transformation T producing a summary from a multidimensional data set is used. Now, given a data set D, a summary S=T(D) and a range query r on D, the problem consists of studying r by modelling it as a random variable defined over the sample space of all the data sets D' such that T(D) = S. The study of such a random variable, done by the definition of its probability distribution and …
We study in this paper provenance information for queries with aggregation. Provenance information was studied in the context of various query languages that do not allow for aggregation, and recent work has suggested to capture provenance by annotating the different database tuples with elements of a commutative semiring and propagating the annotations through query evaluation. We show that aggregate queries pose novel challenges rendering this approach inapplicable. Consequently, we propose a new approach, where we annotate with provenance information not just tuples but also the individual …
Loops that iterate over SQL query results are quite common, both in application programs that run outside the DBMS, as well as User Defined Functions (UDFs) and stored procedures that run within the DBMS. It can be argued that set-oriented operations are more efficient and should be preferred over iteration; but from real-world use cases, it is clear that loops over query results are inevitable in many situations, and are preferred by many users. Such loops, known as cursor loops, come with huge trade-offs and overheads w.r.t. performance, resource consumption and concurrency. We present Aggif…
We propose an algebraic framework for studying efficient algorithms for query evaluation, aggregation, enumeration, and maintenance under updates, on sparse databases. Our framework allows to treat those problems in a unified way, by considering various semirings, depending on the considered problem. As a concrete application, we propose a powerful query language extending first-order logic by aggregation in multiple semirings. We obtain an optimal algorithm for computing the answers of such queries on sparse databases. More precisely, given a database from a fixed class with bounded expansion…
In this work, we present EAGr, a system for supporting large numbers of continuous neighborhood-based ("ego-centric") aggregate queries over large, highly dynamic, and rapidly evolving graphs. Examples of such queries include computation of personalized, tailored trends in social networks, anomaly/event detection in financial transaction networks, local search and alerts in spatio-temporal networks, to name a few. Key challenges in supporting such continuous queries include high update rates typically seen in these situations, large numbers of queries that need to be executed simultaneously, a…
Cardinality estimation is a fundamental task in database query processing and optimization. As shown in recent papers, machine learning (ML)-based approaches can deliver more accurate cardinality estimations than traditional approaches. However, a lot of example queries have to be executed during the model training phase to learn a data-dependent ML model leading to a very time-consuming training phase. Many of those example queries use the same base data, have the same query structure, and only differ in their predicates. Thus, index structures appear to be an ideal optimization technique at …
Aggregate computation in relational databases has long been done using the standard unary aggregation and binary join operators. These implement the classical model of computing joins between relations two at a time, materializing the intermediate results, and then proceeding to do either sort-based or hash-based aggregate computation to derive the final result. This approach, however, can be dramatically sub-optimal in the case of low-selectivity joins, and often ends up generating large intermediate results even if the relations involved as well as the final result sets themselves are quite …
We present a new class of service for location based social networks, called the Flexible Group Spatial Keyword Query, which enables a group of users to collectively find a point of interest (POI) that optimizes an aggregate cost function combining both spatial distances and keyword similarities. In addition, our query service allows users to consider the tradeoffs between obtaining a sub-optimal solution for the entire group and obtaining an optimimized solution but only for a subgroup. We propose algorithms to process three variants of the query: (i) the group nearest neighbor with keywords …
Despite continuous investments in data technologies, the latency of querying data still poses a significant challenge. Modern analytic solutions require near real-time responsiveness both to make them interactive and to support automated processing. Current technologies (Hadoop, Spark, Dataflow) scan the dataset to execute queries. They focus on providing a scalable data storage to maximize task execution speed. We argue that these solutions fail to offer an adequate level of interactivity since they depend on continual access to data. In this paper we present a method for query approximation,…
Database flexible querying is an alternative to the classic one for users. The use of Formal Concepts Analysis (FCA) makes it possible to make approximate answers that those turned over by a classic DataBase Management System (DBMS). Some applications do not need exact answers. However, flexible querying can be expensive in response time. This time is more significant when the flexible querying require the calculation of aggregate functions ("Sum", "Avg", "Count", "Var" etc.). In this paper, we propose an approach which tries to solve this problem by using Approximate Query Processing (AQP).
In this paper, we study top-$k$ aggregate (or group) nearest neighbor queries using the weighted SUM operator under the $L_1$ metric in the plane. Given a set $P$ of $n$ points, for any query consisting of a set $Q$ of $m$ weighted points and an integer $k$, $ 1 \le k \le n$, the top-$k$ aggregate nearest neighbor query asks for the $k$ points of $P$ whose aggregate distances to $Q$ are the smallest, where the aggregate distance of each point $p$ of $P$ to $Q$ is the sum of the weighted distances from $p$ to all points of $Q$. We build an $O(n\log n\log\log n)$-size data structure in $O(n\log …
University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学）；University of Warwick（华威大学）
Large organizations have seamlessly incorporated data-driven decision making in their operations. However, as data volumes increase, expensive big data infrastructures are called to rescue. In this setting, analytics tasks become very costly in terms of query response time, resource consumption, and money in cloud deployments, especially when base data are stored across geographically distributed data centers. Therefore, we introduce an adaptive Machine Learning mechanism which is light-weight, stored client-side, can estimate the answers of a variety of aggregate queries and can avoid the big…
We address aggregate queries over GIS data and moving object data, where non-spatial data are stored in a data warehouse. We propose a formal data model and query language to express complex aggregate queries. Next, we study the compression of trajectory data, produced by moving objects, using the notions of stops and moves. We show that stops and moves are expressible in our query language and we consider a fragment of this language, consisting of regular expressions to talk about temporally ordered sequences of stops and moves. This fragment can be used to efficiently express data mining and…
We study the aggregate/group nearest neighbor searching for the MAX operator in the plane. For a set $P$ of $n$ points and a query set $Q$ of $m$ points, the query asks for a point of $P$ whose maximum distance to the points in $Q$ is minimized. We present data structures for answering such queries for both $L_1$ and $L_2$ distance measures. Previously, only heuristic and approximation algorithms were given for both versions. For the $L_1$ version, we build a data structure of O(n) size in $O(n\log n)$ time, such that each query can be answered in $O(m+\log n)$ time. For the $L_2$ version, we …
We introduce Rabbit, a combinator-based query language. Rabbit is designed to let data analysts and other accidental programmers query complex structured data. We combine the functional data model and the categorical semantics of computations to develop denotational semantics of database queries. In Rabbit, a query is modeled as a Kleisli arrow for a monadic container determined by the query cardinality. In this model, monadic composition can be used to navigate the database, while other query combinators can aggregate, filter, sort and paginate data; construct compound data; connect self-refe…
Sliding-window aggregation is a widely-used approach for extracting insights from the most recent portion of a data stream. The aggregations of interest can usually be expressed as binary operators that are associative but not necessarily commutative nor invertible. Non-invertible operators, however, are difficult to support efficiently. In a 2017 conference paper, we introduced DABA, the first algorithm for sliding-window aggregation with worst-case constant time. Before DABA, if a window had size $n$, the best published algorithms would require $O(\log n)$ aggregation steps per window operat…
This paper presents a query evaluation technique for positive relational algebra queries with aggregates on a representation system for probabilistic data based on the algebraic structures of semiring and semimodule. The core of our evaluation technique is a procedure that compiles semimodule and semiring expressions into so-called decomposition trees, for which the computation of the probability distribution can be done in time linear in the product of the sizes of the probability distributions represented by its nodes. We give syntactic characterisations of tractable queries with aggregates …
In this paper, we propose and study the problem of top-m rank aggregation of spatial objects in streaming queries, where, given a set of objects O, a stream of spatial queries (kNN or range), the goal is to report m objects with the highest aggregate rank. The rank of an object w.r.t. an individual query is computed based on its distance from the query location, and the aggregate rank is computed from all of the individual rank orderings. Solutions to this fundamental problem can be used to monitor the popularity of spatial objects, which in turn can provide new analytical tools for spatial da…
Classical approaches for OLAP assume that the data of all tables is complete. However, in case of incomplete tables with missing tuples, classical approaches fail since the result of a SQL aggregate query might significantly differ from the results computed on the full dataset. Today, the only way to deal with missing data is to manually complete the dataset which causes not only high efforts but also requires good statistical skills to determine when a dataset is actually complete. In this paper, we propose an automated approach for relational data completion called ReStore using a new class …
Missing values widely exist in real-world data sets, and failure to clean the missing data may result in the poor quality of answers to queries. \yiming{Traditionally, missing value imputation has been studied as an offline process as part of preparing data for analysis.} This paper studies query-time missing value imputation and proposes QUIP, which only imputes minimal missing values to answer the query. Specifically, by taking a reasonable good query plan as input, QUIP tries to minimize the missing value imputation cost and query processing overhead. QUIP proposes a new implementation of o…
As more and more organizations rely on data-driven decision making, large-scale analytics become increasingly important. However, an analyst is often stuck waiting for an exact result. As such, organizations turn to Cloud providers that have infrastructure for efficiently analyzing large quantities of data. But, with increasing costs, organizations have to optimize their usage. Having a cheap alternative that provides speed and efficiency will go a long way. Concretely, we offer a solution that can provide approximate answers to aggregate queries, relying on Machine Learning (ML), which is abl…
University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学）；University of Warwick（华威大学）
Analysts wishing to explore multivariate data spaces, typically pose queries involving selection operators, i.e., range or radius queries, which define data subspaces of possible interest and then use aggregation functions, the results of which determine their exploratory analytics interests. However, such aggregate query (AQ) results are simple scalars and as such, convey limited information about the queried subspaces for exploratory analysis. We address this shortcoming aiding analysts to explore and understand data subspaces by contributing a novel explanation mechanism coined XAXA: eXplai…
Analysts commonly investigate the data distributions derived from statistical aggregations of data that are represented by charts, such as histograms and binned scatterplots, to visualize and analyze a large-scale dataset. Aggregate queries are implicitly executed through such a process. Datasets are constantly extremely large; thus, the response time should be accelerated by calculating predefined data cubes. However, the queries are limited to the predefined binning schema of preprocessed data cubes. Such limitation hinders analysts' flexible adjustment of visual specifications to investigat…
Selectivity estimation is important in query optimization, however accurate estimation is difficult when predicates are complex. Instead of existing database synopses and statistics not helpful for such cases, we introduce a new approach to compute the exact selectivity by running an aggregate query during the optimization phase. Exact selectivity can be achieved without significant overhead for in-memory and GPU-accelerated databases by adding extra query execution calls. We implement a selection push-down extension based on the novel selectivity estimation strategy in the MapD database syste…
