Poisson Sampling over Acyclic Joins

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Bekkers, Liese, Neven, Frank, Pantelis, Lorrens, Vansummeren, Stijn
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Bekkers, Liese
Neven, Frank
Pantelis, Lorrens
Vansummeren, Stijn
author_facet Bekkers, Liese
Neven, Frank
Pantelis, Lorrens
Vansummeren, Stijn
contents We introduce the problem of Poisson sampling over joins: compute a sample of the result of a join query by conceptually performing a Bernoulli trial for each join tuple, using a non-uniform and tuple-specific probability. We propose an algorithm for Poisson sampling over acyclic joins that is nearly instance-optimal, running in time O(N + k \log N) where N is the size of the input database, and k is the size of the resulting sample. Our algorithm hinges on two building blocks: (1) The construction of a random-access index that allows, given a number i, to randomly access the i-th join tuple without fully materializing the (possibly large) join result; (2) The probing of this index to construct the result sample. We study the engineering trade-offs required to make both components practical, focusing on their implementation in column stores, and identify best-performing alternatives for both. Our experiments on real-world data demonstrate that this pair of alternatives significantly outperforms the repeated-Bernoulli-trial algorithm for Poisson sampling while also demonstrating that the random-access index by itself can be used to competively implement Yannakakis' acyclic join processing algorithm when no sampling is required. This shows that, as far a query engine design is concerned, it is possible to adopt a uniform basis for both classical acyclic join processing and Poisson sampling, both without regret compared to classical join and sampling algorithms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_10982
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Poisson Sampling over Acyclic Joins
Bekkers, Liese
Neven, Frank
Pantelis, Lorrens
Vansummeren, Stijn
Databases
We introduce the problem of Poisson sampling over joins: compute a sample of the result of a join query by conceptually performing a Bernoulli trial for each join tuple, using a non-uniform and tuple-specific probability. We propose an algorithm for Poisson sampling over acyclic joins that is nearly instance-optimal, running in time O(N + k \log N) where N is the size of the input database, and k is the size of the resulting sample. Our algorithm hinges on two building blocks: (1) The construction of a random-access index that allows, given a number i, to randomly access the i-th join tuple without fully materializing the (possibly large) join result; (2) The probing of this index to construct the result sample. We study the engineering trade-offs required to make both components practical, focusing on their implementation in column stores, and identify best-performing alternatives for both. Our experiments on real-world data demonstrate that this pair of alternatives significantly outperforms the repeated-Bernoulli-trial algorithm for Poisson sampling while also demonstrating that the random-access index by itself can be used to competively implement Yannakakis' acyclic join processing algorithm when no sampling is required. This shows that, as far a query engine design is concerned, it is possible to adopt a uniform basis for both classical acyclic join processing and Poisson sampling, both without regret compared to classical join and sampling algorithms.
title Poisson Sampling over Acyclic Joins
topic Databases
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.10982