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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 139–146Cite as

Approximate Query Processing

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Synonyms

Approximate query answering

Definition

Query processing in a database context is the process that deduces information that is available in the database. Due to the huge amount of data available, one of the main issues of query processing is how to process queries efficiently. In many cases, it is impossible or too expensive for users to get exact answers in the short query response time. Approximate query processing (AQP) is an alternative way that returns approximate answer using information which is similar to the one from which the query would be answered. It is designed primarily for aggregate queries such as count, sum and avg, etc. Given a SQL aggregate query Q, the accurate answer is y while the approximate answer is y′. The relative error of query Q can be quantified as:

$$ Error(Q)=\mid \frac{y-{y}^{\prime }}{y}\mid. $$
(1)

The goal of approximate query processing is to provide approximate answers with acceptable accuracy in orders of magnitude less query response...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO, Hobart, TAS, Australia

    Qing Liu

Authors
  1. Qing Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qing Liu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Xiaofang Zhou

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Liu, Q. (2018). Approximate Query Processing. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_534

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