Auto-Tables: Relationalize Tables without Using Examples-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Auto-Tables: Relationalize Tables without Using Examples

Published:2024-05-14 Issue:1 Volume:53 Page:76-85
ISSN:0163-5808
Container-title:ACM SIGMOD Record
language:en
Short-container-title:SIGMOD Rec.

Author:

Li Peng¹,He Yeye²,Yan Cong²,Wang Yue²,Chaudhuri Surajit²

Affiliation:

1. Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA

2. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

Abstract

Relational tables, where each row corresponds to an entity and each column corresponds to an attribute, have been the standard for tables in relational databases. However, such a standard cannot be taken for granted when dealing with tables "in the wild". Our survey of real spreadsheettables and web-tables shows that over 30% of such tables do not conform to the relational standard, for which complex table-restructuring transformations are needed before these tables can be queried easily using SQL-based tools. Unfortunately, the required transformations are non-trivial to program, which has become a substantial pain point for technical and non-technical users alike, as evidenced by large numbers of forum questions in places like StackOverflow and Excel/Tableau forums.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Link

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3665252.3665269

Reference51 articles.

1. Auto-Tables: full version. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.14565.

2. Example Excel forum question: Hard to query without transformations (Retrieved in 02/2023). https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel/ power-query-data-cleaning-unpivot-transpose-etc/ m-p/2400300.

3. Example Excel forum question: Hard to query without transformations (Retrieved in 02/2023). https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel/ unpivot-grouped-data/m-p/3686239.

4. Example Excel forum question: Hard to query without transformations (Retrieved in 02/2023). https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel/ unpivot-monthly-data/m-p/1867836.

5. Example Excel forum question: Table analysis provides unexpected results (Retrieved in 02/2023). https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/ all/excel-ideas-feature/ c9574cf9-dccc-4356--95d3-07d268e39d82.