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Main Authors: Ramos, David Torres, Lakshman, Vihan, Luo, Chen, Treangen, Todd, Coleman, Benjamin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24882
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author Ramos, David Torres
Lakshman, Vihan
Luo, Chen
Treangen, Todd
Coleman, Benjamin
author_facet Ramos, David Torres
Lakshman, Vihan
Luo, Chen
Treangen, Todd
Coleman, Benjamin
contents We study the problem of building space-efficient, in-memory indexes for massive key-value datasets with highly skewed value distributions. This challenge arises in many data-intensive domains and is particularly acute in computational genomics, where $k$-mer count tables can contain billions of entries dominated by a single frequent value. While recent work has proposed to address this problem by augmenting compressed static functions (CSFs) with pre-filters, existing approaches rely on complex heuristics and lack formal guarantees. In this paper, we introduce a principled algorithm, called AutoCSF, for combining CSFs with pre-filtering to provably handle skewed distributions with near-optimal space usage. We improve upon prior CSF pre-filtering constructions by (1) deriving a mathematically rigorous decision criterion for when filter augmentation is beneficial; (2) presenting a general algorithmic framework for integrating CSFs with modern set membership data structures beyond the classic Bloom filter; and (3) establishing theoretical guarantees on the overall space usage of the resulting indexes. Our open-source implementation of AutoCSF demonstrates space savings over baseline methods while maintaining low query latency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_24882
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AutoCSF: Provably Space-Efficient Indexing of Skewed Key-Value Workloads via Filter-Augmented Compressed Static Functions
Ramos, David Torres
Lakshman, Vihan
Luo, Chen
Treangen, Todd
Coleman, Benjamin
Data Structures and Algorithms
Databases
We study the problem of building space-efficient, in-memory indexes for massive key-value datasets with highly skewed value distributions. This challenge arises in many data-intensive domains and is particularly acute in computational genomics, where $k$-mer count tables can contain billions of entries dominated by a single frequent value. While recent work has proposed to address this problem by augmenting compressed static functions (CSFs) with pre-filters, existing approaches rely on complex heuristics and lack formal guarantees. In this paper, we introduce a principled algorithm, called AutoCSF, for combining CSFs with pre-filtering to provably handle skewed distributions with near-optimal space usage. We improve upon prior CSF pre-filtering constructions by (1) deriving a mathematically rigorous decision criterion for when filter augmentation is beneficial; (2) presenting a general algorithmic framework for integrating CSFs with modern set membership data structures beyond the classic Bloom filter; and (3) establishing theoretical guarantees on the overall space usage of the resulting indexes. Our open-source implementation of AutoCSF demonstrates space savings over baseline methods while maintaining low query latency.
title AutoCSF: Provably Space-Efficient Indexing of Skewed Key-Value Workloads via Filter-Augmented Compressed Static Functions
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Databases
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24882