Database Indexes and…#DeepLearning?

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Historically, we have treated the distribution of data in a database as opaque for the purposes of indexing.(°) I mean, yes, this is where hand-tuning comes in, but that is, by definition, hard to automate.
If, OTOH, our friendly #MachineLearning system could analyze the data, and tune the index on the fly, well, that’s a game-changer, no?
Herewith a paper that goes into pretty much exactly this — https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01208. The key idea is that a model can learn the sort order or structure of lookup keys and use this signal to effectively predict the position or existence of records.
Read on!
(°) The point here is that you need to know what the data is. Is the key you are looking at
  • • a UUID?
  • • an integer?
  • • a sequential integer?
  • • Is it unique?

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