Search arXiv⌕ Search

arXiv · 2508.18617

WoW: A Window-to-Window Incremental Index for Range-Filtering Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search

Abstract

Given a hybrid dataset where every data object consists of a vector and an attribute value, for each query with a target vector and a range filter, range-filtering approximate nearest neighbor search (RFANNS) aims to retrieve the most similar vectors from the dataset and the corresponding attribute values fall in the query range. It is a fundamental function in vector database management systems and intelligent systems with embedding abilities. Dedicated indices for RFANNS accelerate query speed with an acceptable accuracy loss on nearest neighbors. However, they are still facing the challenges to be constructed incrementally and generalized to achieve superior query performance for arbitrary range filters. In this paper, we introduce a window graph-based RFANNS index. For incremental construction, we propose an insertion algorithm to add new vector-attribute pairs into hierarchical window graphs with varying window size. To handle arbitrary range filters, we optimize relevant window search for attribute filter checks and vector distance computations by range selectivity. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets show that for index construction, the indexing time is on par with the most building-efficient index, and 4.9x faster than the most query-efficient index with 0.4-0.5x smaller size; For RFANNS query, it is 4x faster than the most efficient incremental index, and matches the performance of the best statically-built index.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Ziqi Wang, Jingzhe Zhang, Wei Hu. 2025-09-26. WoW: A Window-to-Window Incremental Index for Range-Filtering Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18617

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

MLSkip: Data Skipping for ML Filters via Lightweight Metadata

Database vendors recently released AI functions that can be used in filter predicates. As such functions often rely on costly, black-box ML models, they unveil new data management challenges. Concretely, traditional data skipping techniques for integer and string data fail to be applicable to the new filter type. Indeed, there is no known mechanism for pruning non-qualifying row groups, e.g., when reading files from blob storage. In this work, we initiate the study of data skipping techniques for ML filters. We make the case that Parquet's default min-max metadata is enough to enable pruning. To this end, we draw connections to two lines of research: (i) the recently proposed query language for ML models and (ii) neural network verification. Our preliminary results on ReLU architectures show that on tables from TPC-H and TPC-DS, the average pruning effectiveness for filters of selectivity below 0.1% amounts to 27.4%. Finally, inspired by research on spatial joins, we propose an enhanced metadata structure: a size-bounded 2D convex hull that verification tools can make better use of, increasing the pruning effectiveness to 38.31%, while occupying at most 45 bytes per row group and column pair. We observe an end-to-end speedup of 1.07$\times$ over PyTorch in DuckDB.

cs.DB↗

IBLTs Measure Before They Decode: Self-Sizing Set Reconciliation for Database Consistency Verification

Cross-system data replication pipelines cannot confirm end-to-end consistency from the local guarantees of each hop, so the two endpoints must be compared directly on a periodic basis. Once the rows of a fixed snapshot are normalized into fingerprints, the task reduces to finding the symmetric difference of the two sets. An Invertible Bloom Lookup Table (IBLT) reconciles the sets with communication that grows only with the difference cardinality $d$, independent of table size, but its capacity must be fixed while $d$ is still unknown. Across 41,603 production reconciliations over 90 days, nonzero $d$ spans about seven orders of magnitude, and no reliable empirical constant exists. We show that the count array of an IBLT has already measured $d$ before decoding. The measurement is in-band: it is carried by the recovery sketch itself and adds no bytes dedicated to estimation. A mapping-aware theorem extends the construction to Irregular, Rateless, and MET IBLTs. The protocol reads the estimate only after a decoding failure; we prove that the failure-conditioned lower quantile bounds the risk of underestimation, which gives the second-round capacity a configurable success-probability guarantee. The resulting self-sizing protocol attempts recovery with a small first-round sketch and stops on success; on failure it reads $d$, sizes the second round, and completes reconciliation in at most two rounds. Against a controlled oracle, communication is 1.29-1.47 times that of a scheme given $d$ in advance. Production workload characterization, relational-database replay, and a cross-city KV deployment confirm the end-to-end mechanism. In production on an Oracle-MySQL link, all completed runs succeeded within two rounds, 90.7% on the 1-RTT fast path with a single 16 KB sketch.

cs.DB↗

KathDB-FAO: Synthesized Query Plans in a Multimodal DBMS

We design, implement, and evaluate KathDB-FAO, a new query evaluation subsystem for our KathDB multimodal DBMS. KathDB-FAO takes as input a query in natural language (NL) and converts it into a query execution plan where each operator is a function whose body is synthesized during query evaluation, which allows powerful query-specific optimizations. To generate accurate and efficient plans from NL, KathDB-FAO first extracts fine-grained atomic actions for correctness, then establishes contracts on the inputs and outputs of those actions and groups them for efficiency, and finally synthesizes the function for each group on the fly. On SemBench, KathDB-FAO cuts execution cost by 58.8% on average across scenarios compared with the next best system, at comparable or better quality.

cs.DB↗