Scaling Probabilistic Databases

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Scaling Probabilistic Databases Scaling Probabilistic Databases Hernan´ Blanco University of Antwerp, Belgium [email protected] Supervised by Martin Theobald University of Ulm, Germany [email protected] ABSTRACT The Trio probabilistic database system [7] was the first Probabilistic databases, which have been widely studied over system that explicitly addressed the integration of data man- the past years, lie at the expressive intersection of databases agement via SQL, provenance (aka. \lineage") management and probabilistic graphical models, thus aiming to provide via Boolean formulas, and efficient probabilistic inference. efficient support for the evaluation of probabilistic queries The data model which was considered for Uncertainty and over uncertain, relational data. Lineage Databases (ULDBs) [1] was the first probabilis- Several Machine Learning approaches, on the one hand, tic database approach that was shown to provide a closed have recently investigated the issue of distributed probabilis- and complete probabilistic extension to the relational model tic inference but do not support relational data and SQL. which supports all of the core relational (i.e., SQL-based) Conventional database engines, on the other hand, do not operations over this kind of uncertain data. handle probabilistic data and queries, nor any form of un- A key in making probabilistic inference scalable to the certain data management. With this project, we aim to extent that is needed for modern data management appli- fill this prevalent gap between the two fields of Databases cations lies (without considering parallelization techniques and Machine Learning by scaling probabilistic databases to yet) in the identification of tractable query classes and the a distributed setting, which is a topic that so far has not adaptation of known inference techniques from graphical been addressed in the literature. The proposed PhD disser- models to a relational data setting. While for specific classes tation topic provides a number of intriguing and challenging of queries, probabilistic inference can directly be coupled aspects, both from a theoretical and a systems-engineering with the relational operations [9, 12], the performance may perspective. very quickly degenerate when the underlying independence assumptions among the data objects do not hold. Despite the polynomial runtime complexity for the data compu- 1. INTRODUCTION tation step that is involved in finding answer candidates Managing uncertain data via probabilistic databases to probabilistic queries, the confidence computation step, (PDBs) has evolved as an established field of research in i.e., the actual probabilistic inference, for these answers is recent years. The field meanwhile encompasses a plethora known to be of exponential cost already for fairly simple of applications, which are ranging from scientific data man- SQL queries. Consequently, much of the recent research in agement, sensor networks, data integration, to knowledge PDBs has focused on establishing a classification of query management systems [13, 12]. PDBs lie at the intersection plans for which confidence computations are either of poly- of databases and probabilistic graphical models. While clas- nomial runtime or are #P-hard [2, 12]. Thus, strategies for sical database approaches benefit from a mature and scal- efficient confidence computations and early pruning of low- able infrastructure for the management of relational data, confidence query answers remain a key challenge also for the probabilistic databases aim to further combine these well- scalable management of uncertain data via PDBs. studied data management strategies with inference tech- niques known from graphical models such as Bayesian Net- works and Markov Random Fields. PDBs adopt powerful 2. STATE-OF-THE-ART query languages from relational databases, including Rela- tional Algebra, the Structured Query Language (SQL), and Recent work on efficient confidence computations in PDBs logical query languages such as Datalog. has addressed this problem mainly from two ends, namely by restricting the class of queries that are allowed, i.e., by focusing on so-called safe query plans [12], or by considering a specific class of tuple-dependencies, commonly referred to as read-once functions [11]. Intuitively, safe query plans de- note a class of queries for which confidence computations This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- can directly be coupled with the relational operators and NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this li- thus be performed by an extensional query plan. On the cense, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Obtain per- other hand, read-once formulas denote a class of Boolean mission prior to any use beyond those covered by the license. Contact copyright holder by emailing [email protected]. lineage formulas which can be factorized in polynomial time Proceedings of the VLDB 2015 PhD Workshop into a form where every variable in the formula (each repre- 1 senting a database tuple) appears at most once, thus again Slave 1 Slave 2 permitting efficient confidence computations. While safe plans clearly focus on the characteristics of the query structure, and read-once formulas focus on the logi- x4 cal dependencies among individual data objects, top-k-style pruning approaches [4, 8] have been proposed as an alter- x2 x5 x7 native way to address confidence computations in PDBs. These approaches aim to efficiently identify the top-k most x1 probable answers, using lower and upper bounds for their x3 x6 x8 marginal probabilities, without the need to compute the ex- act probabilities of these query answers. In [4], a form of x9 first-order lineage formulas (based on a restricted class of first-order logic) is proposed, which allows to fully integrate the data and confidence computation steps in a probabilis- R1 A B R2 B C R3 C D tic database setting. PrDB [10] is one of the most generic PDB approaches in the field, aiming to significantly widen x1 a1 b1 x4 b1 c1 x6 c1 d2 the opportunities to include richer probabilistic models by x2 a2 b2 x5 b2 c3 x8 c1 d1 allowing uncertainty at both tuple and attribute level as x3 a3 b3 x7 b3 c2 x9 c2 d1 well as tuple correlations. It also achieves improvements in terms of fast inference by implementing a self-developed al- Figure 1: A sample factor graph. The red circles represent variable nodes which are database items (instantiated in relations gorithm based on bisimulation. However, also PrDB does R1, R2 and R3); the blue squares represent factor nodes. The not address the problem of distribution and parallelization, data is distributed across two cluster slaves by minimizing the cut where an enormous potential for scalability lies. between the two partitions of the factor graph. On the other hand, recent trends in relational databases clearly focus on \Big Data" management and \Cloud Com- DHJ puting". Distributed database engines like Apache's Cas- C sandra, HIVE, or HBase aim to achieve an even better scal- ability to many petabytes of data by going for distributed DMJ B file systems and by performing SQL queries via iterative and largely synchronous communication workflows based on Google's MapReduce or Apache's Hadoop frameworks. DIS(R1) DIS(R2) DIS(R3) There currently exists no distributed probabilistic database (a) (b) system. A number of systems brought up by the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence communities, such as Figure 2: (a) A representation of a distributed query execu- CMU's GraphLab [6], MIT's FactorIE, Microsoft's Infer.NET tion: distributed index scans over the tree base relations R1, R2 and R3 from Figure 1, a distributed merge join on B, and a (MSR Cambridge), and the recently released Amazon Ma- distributed hash join on C. (b) The results retrieved from eval- chine Learning and AMPLab's KeystoneML platforms fo- uating the query represented in Figure 2(a), each record holding cus on purely graph-based and partly also on distributed its respective lineage expression. approaches. However, all of these employ their own APIs and do not natively support relational data or SQL. From a more classical (i.e., deterministic) database perspective, we tic inference based on variable elimination and asynchronous have recently seen distributed engines like SciDB or Berke- message passing. ley's BOOM project, which were designed from scratch to be massively scalable (and which, in the first case, origi- 3.1 A Unifying Data Model nally even had the support for uncertain data as part of Specifically, in this PhD project we advocate for the in- its core design goals), but they ultimately do not support vestigation of a distributed factor graph model as being the probabilistic or otherwise uncertain data. core data model for the intended (both distributed and prob- abilistic) database infrastructure. Factor graphs provide a generic data model for capturing various kinds of proba- 3. NOVEL CONTRIBUTIONS bilistic graphical models and have successfully been applied In this project, we advocate for the development of a radi- to related (but non-distributed) probabilistic settings in the cally new, scalable, and massively distributed infrastructure past. A factor graph (see Figure 1) is a bipartite graph for probabilistic databases. The goal is to investigate how far G(X; Φ) that consists of a set of variable nodes X = fx1;:::; the advantages of mature database technologies can be car- xmg and a set of factor nodes Φ = fφ1(X1); : : : ; φn(Xn)g, ried over to a distributed and probabilistic setting. We pro- where each Xs ⊆ X is a subset of variables which are as- pose a probabilistic data(-base) model, seeking to combine sociated with a factor function φs : Xs ! R, such that Q both the generic semantics of a relational backend with par- G(X; Φ) = i φi(Xi). allelization opportunities for probabilistic inference based on Variable nodes will represent data items of mutable (usu- graphical models. Our intended research will specifically fo- ally binary) state, which are connected to factor nodes in cus on the core functionalities of a database in terms of effi- order to model weighted dependencies between the possi- cient query processing over a distributed, persistent storage ble states of the variable nodes.
Recommended publications
  • Probabilistic Databases
    Series ISSN: 2153-5418 SUCIU • OLTEANU •RÉ •KOCH M SYNTHESIS LECTURES ON DATA MANAGEMENT &C Morgan & Claypool Publishers Series Editor: M. Tamer Özsu, University of Waterloo Probabilistic Databases Probabilistic Databases Dan Suciu, University of Washington, Dan Olteanu, University of Oxford Christopher Ré,University of Wisconsin-Madison and Christoph Koch, EPFL Probabilistic databases are databases where the value of some attributes or the presence of some records are uncertain and known only with some probability. Applications in many areas such as information extraction, RFID and scientific data management, data cleaning, data integration, and financial risk DATABASES PROBABILISTIC assessment produce large volumes of uncertain data, which are best modeled and processed by a probabilistic database. This book presents the state of the art in representation formalisms and query processing techniques for probabilistic data. It starts by discussing the basic principles for representing large probabilistic databases, by decomposing them into tuple-independent tables, block-independent-disjoint tables, or U-databases. Then it discusses two classes of techniques for query evaluation on probabilistic databases. In extensional query evaluation, the entire probabilistic inference can be pushed into the database engine and, therefore, processed as effectively as the evaluation of standard SQL queries. The relational queries that can be evaluated this way are called safe queries. In intensional query evaluation, the probabilistic Dan Suciu inference is performed over a propositional formula called lineage expression: every relational query can be evaluated this way, but the data complexity dramatically depends on the query being evaluated, and Dan Olteanu can be #P-hard. The book also discusses some advanced topics in probabilistic data management such as top-kquery processing, sequential probabilistic databases, indexing and materialized views, and Monte Carlo databases.
    [Show full text]
  • Adaptive Schema Databases ∗
    Adaptive Schema Databases ∗ William Spothb, Bahareh Sadat Arabi, Eric S. Chano, Dieter Gawlicko, Adel Ghoneimyo, Boris Glavici, Beda Hammerschmidto, Oliver Kennedyb, Seokki Leei, Zhen Hua Liuo, Xing Niui, Ying Yangb b: University at Buffalo i: Illinois Inst. Tech. o: Oracle {wmspoth|okennedy|yyang25}@buffalo.edu {barab|slee195|xniu7}@hawk.iit.edu [email protected] {eric.s.chan|dieter.gawlick|adel.ghoneimy|beda.hammerschmidt|zhen.liu}@oracle.com ABSTRACT in unstructured or semi-structured form, then an ETL (i.e., The rigid schemas of classical relational databases help users Extract, Transform, and Load) process needs to be designed in specifying queries and inform the storage organization of to translate the input data into relational form. Thus, clas- data. However, the advantages of schemas come at a high sical relational systems require a lot of upfront investment. upfront cost through schema and ETL process design. In This makes them unattractive when upfront costs cannot this work, we propose a new paradigm where the database be amortized, such as in workloads with rapidly evolving system takes a more active role in schema development and data or where individual elements of a schema are queried data integration. We refer to this approach as adaptive infrequently. Furthermore, in settings like data exploration, schema databases (ASDs). An ASD ingests semi-structured schema design simply takes too long to be practical. or unstructured data directly using a pluggable combina- Schema-on-query is an alternative approach popularized tion of extraction and data integration techniques. Over by NoSQL and Big Data systems that avoids the upfront time it discovers and adapts schemas for the ingested data investment in schema design by performing data extraction using information provided by data integration and infor- and integration at query-time.
    [Show full text]
  • Finding Interesting Itemsets Using a Probabilistic Model for Binary Databases
    Finding interesting itemsets using a probabilistic model for binary databases Tijl De Bie University of Bristol, Department of Engineering Mathematics Queen’s Building, University Walk, Bristol, BS8 1TR, UK [email protected] ABSTRACT elegance and e±ciency of the algorithms to search for fre- A good formalization of interestingness of a pattern should quent patterns. Unfortunately, the frequency of a pattern satisfy two criteria: it should conform well to intuition, and is only loosely related to interestingness. The output of fre- it should be computationally tractable to use. The focus quent pattern mining methods is usually an immense bag has long been on the latter, with the development of frequent of patterns that are not necessarily interesting, and often pattern mining methods. However, it is now recognized that highly redundant with each other. This has hampered the more appropriate measures than frequency are required. uptake of FPM and FIM in data mining practice. In this paper we report results in this direction for item- Recent research has shifted focus to the search for more set mining in binary databases. In particular, we introduce useful formalizations of interestingness that match practical a probabilistic model that can be ¯tted e±ciently to any needs more closely, while still being amenable to e±cient binary database, and that has a compact and explicit repre- algorithms. As FIM is arguably the simplest special case of sentation. We then show how this model enables the formal- frequent pattern mining, it is not surprising that most of the ization of an intuitive and tractable interestingness measure recent work has focussed on itemset patterns, see e.g.
    [Show full text]
  • Open-World Probabilistic Databases
    Open-World Probabilistic Databases Ismail˙ Ilkan˙ Ceylan and Adnan Darwiche and Guy Van den Broeck Computer Science Department University of California, Los Angeles [email protected],fdarwiche,[email protected] Abstract techniques, from part-of-speech tagging until relation ex- traction (Mintz et al. 2009). For knowledge-base comple- Large-scale probabilistic knowledge bases are becoming in- tion – the task of deriving new facts from existing knowl- creasingly important in academia and industry alike. They edge – statistical relational learning algorithms make use are constantly extended with new data, powered by modern information extraction tools that associate probabilities with of embeddings (Bordes et al. 2011; Socher et al. 2013) database tuples. In this paper, we revisit the semantics under- or probabilistic rules (Wang, Mazaitis, and Cohen 2013; lying such systems. In particular, the closed-world assump- De Raedt et al. 2015). In both settings, the output is a pre- tion of probabilistic databases, that facts not in the database dicted fact with its probability. It is therefore required to de- have probability zero, clearly conflicts with their everyday fine probabilistic semantics for knowledge bases. The classi- use. To address this discrepancy, we propose an open-world cal and most-basic model is that of tuple-independent prob- probabilistic database semantics, which relaxes the probabili- abilistic databases (PDBs) (Suciu et al. 2011), which in- ties of open facts to intervals. While still assuming a finite do- deed underlies many of these systems (Dong et al. 2014; main, this semantics can provide meaningful answers when Shin et al. 2015).
    [Show full text]
  • A Compositional Query Algebra for Second-Order Logic and Uncertain Databases
    A Compositional Query Algebra for Second-Order Logic and Uncertain Databases Christoph Koch Department of Computer Science Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA [email protected] ABSTRACT guages for querying possible worlds. Indeed, second-order World-set algebra is a variable-free query language for uncer- quantifiers are the essence of what-if reasoning in databases. tain databases. It constitutes the core of the query language World-set algebra seems to be a strong candidate for a core implemented in MayBMS, an uncertain database system. algebra for forming query plans and optimizing and execut- This paper shows that world-set algebra captures exactly ing them in uncertain database management systems. second-order logic over finite structures, or equivalently, the It was left open in previous work whether world-set alge- polynomial hierarchy. The proofs also imply that world- bra is closed under composition, or whether definitions are set algebra is closed under composition, a previously open adding to the expressive power of the language. Compo- problem. sitionality is a desirable and rather commonplace property of query algebras, but in the case of WSA it seems rather unlikely to hold. The reason for this is that the algebra con- 1. INTRODUCTION tains an uncertainty-introduction operation that on the level Developing suitable query languages for uncertain data- of possible worlds is nondeterministic. First materializing a bases is a substantial research challenge that is only cur- view and subsequently using it multiple times in the query is rently starting to get addressed. Conceptually, an uncertain semantically quite different from composing the query with database is a finite set of possible worlds, each one a re- the view and thus obtaining several copies of the view def- lational database.
    [Show full text]
  • Answering Queries from Statistics and Probabilistic Views∗
    Answering Queries from Statistics and Probabilistic Views∗ Nilesh Dalvi Dan Suciu University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA 1 Introduction paper we will assume the Local As View (LAV) data integration paradigm [17, 16], which consists of defin- Systems integrating dozens of databases, in the scien- ing a global mediated schema R¯, then expressing each tific domain or in a large corporation, need to cope local source i as a view vi(R¯) over the global schema. with a wide variety of imprecisions, such as: different Users are allowed to ask queries over the global, me- representations of the same object in different sources; diated schema, q(R¯), however the data is given as in- imperfect and noisy schema alignments; contradictory stances J1; : : : ; Jm of the local data sources. In our information across sources; constraint violations; or in- model all instances are probabilistic, both the local sufficient evidence to answer a given query. If standard instances and the global instance. Statistics are given query semantics were applied to such data, all but the explicitly over the global schema R¯, and the probabil- most trivial queries will return an empty answer. ities are given explicitly over the local sources, hence We believe that probabilistic databases are the right over the views. We make the Open World Assumption paradigm to model all types of imprecisions in a uni- throughout the paper. form and principled way. A probabilistic database is a probability distribution on all instances [5, 4, 15, 1.1 Example: Using Statistics 12, 11, 8]. Their early motivation was to model im- precisions at the tuple level: tuples are not known Suppose we integrate two sources, one show- with certainty to belong to the database, or represent ing which employee works for what depart- noisy measurements, etc.
    [Show full text]
  • Uva-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)
    UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) On entity resolution in probabilistic data Ayat, S.N. Publication date 2014 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Ayat, S. N. (2014). On entity resolution in probabilistic data. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:01 Oct 2021 On Entity Resolution in Probabilistic Data Naser Ayat On Entity Resolution in Probabilistic Data Naser Ayat On Entity Resolution in Probabilistic Data Naser Ayat On Entity Resolution in Probabilistic Data Academisch Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof.dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op dinsdag 30 september 2014, te 12.00 uur door Seyed Naser Ayat geboren te Esfahan, Iran Promotors: prof.
    [Show full text]
  • BAYESSTORE: Managing Large, Uncertain Data Repositories with Probabilistic Graphical Models
    BAYESSTORE: Managing Large, Uncertain Data Repositories with Probabilistic Graphical Models Daisy Zhe Wang∗ , Eirinaios Michelakis∗ , Minos Garofalakisy∗ , and Joseph M. Hellerstein∗ ∗ Univ. of California, Berkeley EECS and y Yahoo! Research ABSTRACT Of course, the fundamental mathematical tools for managing un- certainty come from probability and statistics. In recent years, these Several real-world applications need to effectively manage and reason about tools have been aggressively imported into the computational do- large amounts of data that are inherently uncertain. For instance, perva- main under the rubric of Statistical Machine Learning (SML). Of sive computing applications must constantly reason about volumes of noisy special note here is the widespread use of Graphical Modeling tech- sensory readings for a variety of reasons, including motion prediction and niques, including the many variants of Bayesian Networks (BNs) human behavior modeling. Such probabilistic data analyses require so- and Markov Random Fields (MRFs) [13]. These techniques can phisticated machine-learning tools that can effectively model the complex provide robust statistical models that capture complex correlation spatio/temporal correlation patterns present in uncertain sensory data. Un- patterns among variables, while, at the same time, addressing some fortunately, to date, most existing approaches to probabilistic database sys- computational efficiency and scalability issues as well. Graphical tems have relied on somewhat simplistic models of uncertainty that can be models have been applied with great success in applications as di- easily mapped onto existing relational architectures: Probabilistic informa- verse as signal processing, information retrieval, sensornets and tion is typically associated with individual data tuples, with only limited pervasive computing, robotics, natural language processing, and or no support for effectively capturing and reasoning about complex data computer vision.
    [Show full text]
  • Brief Tutorial on Probabilistic Databases
    Brief Tutorial on Probabilistic Databases Dan Suciu University of Washington Simons 2016 1 About This Talk • Probabilistic databases – Tuple-independent – Query evaluation • Statistical relational models – Representation, learning, inference in FO – Reasoning/learning = lifted inference • Sources: – Book 2011 [S.,Olteanu,Re,Koch] – Upcoming F&T survey [van Den Broek,S] Simons 2016 2 Background: Relational databases Smoker Friend X Y X Z Database D = Alice 2009 Alice Bob Alice 2010 Alice Carol Bob 2009 Bob Carol Carol 2010 Carol Bob Query: Q(z) = ∃x (Smoker(x,’2009’)∧Friend(x,z)) Z Constraint: Q(D) = Bob Q = ∀x (Smoker(x,’2010’)⇒Friend(x,’Bob’)) Carol Q(D) = true Probabilistic Database Probabilistic database D: X y P a1 b1 p1 a1 b2 p2 a2 b2 p3 Possible worlds semantics: Σworld PD(world) = 1 X y P (Q) = Σ P (world) X Xy y D world |= Q D a1 b1 X y a1 a1b2 b1 X y a1 b2 a1 b1 X y p1p2p3 a2 a2b2 b2 a2 b2 X y a2 b2 a1 b2 a1 b1 X y (1-p1)p2p3 a1 b2 (1-p1)(1-p2)(1-p3) Outline • Model Counting • Small Dichotomy Theorem • Dichotomy Theorem • Query Compilation • Conclusions, Open Problems Simons 2016 5 Model Counting • Given propositional Boolean formula F, compute the number of models #F Example: X1 X2 X3 F F = (X1∨X2) ∧ (X2∨X3) ∧ (X3∨X1) 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 #F = 4 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 [Valiant’79] #P-hard, even for 2CNF 1 1 1 1 Probability of a Formula • Each variable X has a probability p(X); • P(F) = probability that F=true, when each X is set to true independently Example: X1 X2 X3 F F = (X1∨X2) ∧ (X2∨X3) ∧ (X3∨X1) 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 P(F) = (1-p1)*p2*p3 + 0 1 0 0 p1*(1-p2)*p3 + p1*p2*(1-p3) + 0 1 1 1 p1*p2*p3 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 n If p(X) = ½ for all X, then P(F) = #F / 2 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 Algorithms for Model Counting [Gomes, Sabharwal, Selman’2009] Based on full search DPLL: • Shannon expansion.
    [Show full text]
  • Efficient In-Database Analytics with Graphical Models
    Efficient In-Database Analytics with Graphical Models Daisy Zhe Wang, Yang Chen, Christan Grant and Kun Li fdaisyw,yang,cgrant,[email protected]fl.edu University of Florida, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering Abstract Due to recent application push, there is high demand in industry to extend database systems to perform efficient and scalable in-database analytics based on probabilistic graphical models (PGMs). We discuss issues in supporting in-database PGM methods and present techniques to achieve a deep integration of the PGM methods into the relational data model as well as the query processing and optimization engine. This is an active research area and the techniques discussed are being further developed and evaluated. 1 Introduction Graphical models, also known as probabilistic graphical models (PGMs), are a class of expressive and widely adopted machine learning models that compactly represent the joint probability distribution over a large number of interdependent random variables. They are used extensively in large-scale data analytics, including infor- mation extraction (IE), knowledge base population (KBP), speech recognition and computer vision. In the past decade, many of these applications have witnessed dramatic increase in data volume. As a result, PGM-based data analytics need to scale to terabytes of data or billions of data items. While new data-parallel and graph- parallel processing platforms such as Hadoop, Spark and GraphLab [1, 36, 3] are widely used to support scalable PGM methods, such solutions are not effective for applications with data residing in databases or with need to support online PGM-based data analytics queries. More specifically, large volumes of valuable data are likely to pour into database systems for many years to come due to the maturity of the commercial database systems with transaction support and ACID properties and due to the legal auditing and data privacy requirements in many organizations.
    [Show full text]
  • Indexing Correlated Probabilistic Databases
    Indexing Correlated Probabilistic Databases Bhargav Kanagal Amol Deshpande [email protected] [email protected] Dept. of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park MD 20742 ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION With large amounts of correlated probabilistic data being Large amounts of correlated probabilistic data are be- generated in a wide range of application domains includ- ing generated in a variety of application domains includ- ing sensor networks, information extraction, event detection ing sensor networks [14, 21], information extraction [20, 17], etc., effectively managing and querying them has become data integration [1, 15], activity recognition [28], and RFID an important research direction. While there is an exhaus- stream analysis [29, 26]. The correlations exhibited by these tive body of literature on querying independent probabilistic data sources can range from simple mutual exclusion depen- data, supporting efficient queries over large-scale, correlated dencies, to complex dependencies typically captured using databases remains a challenge. In this paper, we develop Bayesian or Markov networks [30] or through constraints on efficient data structures and indexes for supporting infer- the possible values that the tuple attributes can take [19, 12]. ence and decision support queries over such databases. Our Although several approaches have been proposed for rep- proposed hierarchical data structure is suitable both for in- resenting complex correlations and for querying over corre- memory and disk-resident databases. We represent the cor- lated databases, the rapidly increasing scale of such databases relations in the probabilistic database using a junction tree has raised unique challenges that have not been addressed over the tuple-existence or attribute-value random variables, before.
    [Show full text]
  • Analyzing Uncertain Tabular Data
    Analyzing Uncertain Tabular Data Oliver Kennedy and Boris Glavic Abstract It is common practice to spend considerable time refining source data to address issues of data quality before beginning any data analysis. For ex- ample, an analyst might impute missing values or detect and fuse duplicate records representing the same real-world entity. However, there are many sit- uations where there are multiple possible candidate resolutions for a data quality issue, but there is not sufficient evidence for determining which of the resolutions is the most appropriate. In this case, the only way forward is to make assumptions to restrict the space of solutions and/or to heuristically choose a resolution based on characteristics that are deemed predictive of \good" resolutions. Although it is important for the analyst to understand the impact of these assumptions and heuristic choices on her results, evalu- ating this impact can be highly non-trivial and time consuming. For several decades now, the fields of probabilistic, incomplete, and fuzzy databases have developed strategies for analyzing the impact of uncertainty on the outcome of analyses. This general family of uncertainty-aware databases aims to model ambiguity in the results of analyses expressed in standard languages like SQL, SparQL, R, or Spark. An uncertainty-aware database uses descriptions of potential errors and ambiguities in source data to derive a correspond- ing description of potential errors or ambiguities in the result of an analysis accessing this source data. Depending on technique, these descriptions of uncertainty may be either quantitative (bounds, probabilities), or qualita- tive (certain outcomes, unknown values, explanations of uncertainty).
    [Show full text]