In this episode, we sit down with Marco Costa to discuss the fascinating world of range filters, focusing on how they help optimize queries in databases by determining whether a range intersects with a given set of keys. Marco explains how traditional range filters, like Bloom filters, often result in high false positives and slow query times, especially when dealing with adversarial inputs where queries are correlated with the keys. He walks us through the limitations of existing heuristic-based solutions and the common challenges they face in maintaining accuracy and speed under such conditions.

The highlight of our conversation is Grafite, a novel range filter introduced by Marco and his team. Unlike previous approaches, Grafite comes with clear theoretical guarantees and offers robust performance across various datasets, query sizes, and workloads. Marco dives into the technicalities, explaining how Grafite delivers faster query times and maintains predictable false positive rates, making it the most reliable range filter in scenarios where queries are correlated with keys. Additionally, he introduces a simple heuristic filter that excels in uncorrelated queries, pushing the boundaries of current solutions in the field.

SIGMOD' 24 Paper - Grafite: Taming Adversarial Queries with Optimal Range Filters

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