Technical Perspective:Probabilistic Data with Continuous Distributions

摘要

The paper entitled "Probabilistic Data with Continuous Distributions" overviews recent work on the foundations of infinite probabilistic databases [3, 2]. Prior work on probabilistic databases (PDBs) focused almost exclusively on the finite case: A finite PDB represents a discrete probability distribution over a finite set of possible worlds [4]. In contrast, an infinite PDB models a continuous probability distribution over an infinite set of possible worlds. In both cases, each world is a finite relational database instance. Continuous distributions are essential and commonplace tools for reasoning under uncertainty in practice. Accommodating them in the framework of probabilistic databases brings us closer to applications that naturally rely on both continuous distributions and relational databases.