Synonyms
Ranking queries
Definition
A preference query is a query obtained by augmenting a database query with user-defined preferences (preference specification), so that the preference query returns not all the answers but only the best, most preferred answers. For example, given a binary preference relation, a winnow preference query may return all the undominated tuples belonging to the input (all the tuples to which no tuples in the input are preferred). As another example, given a numeric scoring function a preference Top-K query returns K answers, if available, with the highest scores. Note: Top-K queries are not considered in this article because they are covered in a separate article.
Historical Background
An early paper [1] viewed preference queries in the context of relational query relaxation. The answers satisfying the query condition would be the best; the answers obtained by progressively weakening the query condition would be less and less preferred. So in the absence...
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Chomicki, J. (2018). Preference Queries. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_80687
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