Selectivity Estimation Y. Matias, J. S. Vitter, and M. Wang.
Query optimization is an integral part of relational database management systems.
P , we need to estimate the fraction of records in the database that satisfy P . Many commercial database systems maintain histograms to approximate the frequency distribution of values in the attributes of relations. In this paper, we present a technique based upon a multiresolution wavelet decomposition for building histograms on the underlying data distributions, with applications to databases, statistics, and simulation. Histograms built on the cumulative data distributions give very good approximations with limited space usage. We give fast algorithms for constructing histograms and using them in an on-line fashion for selectivity estimation.