Lineage processing over correlated probabilistic databases

In this paper, we address the problem of scalably evaluating conjunctive queries over correlated probabilistic databases containing tuple or attribute uncertainties. Like previous work, we adopt a two-phase approach where we first compute lineages of the output tuples, and then compute the probabilities of the lineage formulas. However unlike previous work, we allow for arbitrary and complex correlations to be present in the data, captured via a forest of junction trees. We observe that evaluating even read-once (tree structured) lineages (e.g., those generated by hierarchical conjunctive queries), polynomially computable over tuple independent probabilistic databases, is #P-complete for lightly correlated probabilistic databases like Markov sequences. We characterize the complexity of exact computation of the probability of the lineage formula on a correlated database using a parameter called lwidth (analogous to the notion of treewidth). For lineages that result in low lwidth, we compute exact probabilities using a novel message passing algorithm, and for lineages that induce large lwidths, we develop approximate Monte Carlo algorithms to estimate the result probabilities. We scale our algorithms to very large correlated probabilistic databases using the previously proposed INDSEP data structure. To mitigate the complexity of lineage evaluation, we develop optimization techniques to process a batch of lineages by sharing computation across formulas, and to exploit any independence relationships that may exist in the data. Our experimental study illustrates the benefits of using our algorithms for processing lineage formulas over correlated probabilistic databases.