Fitting Algorithms for Conjunctive Queries

A fitting algorithm for conjunctive queries (CQs) is an algorithm that takes as input a collection of data examples and outputs a CQ that fits the examples. In this column, we propose a set of desirable properties of such algorithms and use this as a guide for surveying results from the authors' recent papers published in PODS 2023, IJCAI 2023, and Inf. Proc. Letters 2024. In particular, we explain and compare several concrete fitting algorithms, and we discuss complexity and size bounds for constructing fitting CQs with desirable properties.