Query-Driven Sampling for Collective Entity Resolution

TL;DR

This paper introduces query-driven collective entity resolution techniques that enable faster, on-demand resolution of entities in large probabilistic databases, significantly reducing computation time for practical applications.

Contribution

It proposes novel SQL-based ER query classes and biased sampling algorithms to perform efficient, real-time collective entity resolution on large datasets.

Findings

Query-driven ER converges within minutes on large datasets.

Biased sampling improves efficiency of MCMC inference.

Selective ER provides accurate results with reduced computation.

Abstract

Probabilistic databases play a preeminent role in the processing and management of uncertain data. Recently, many database research efforts have integrated probabilistic models into databases to support tasks such as information extraction and labeling. Many of these efforts are based on batch oriented inference which inhibits a realtime workflow. One important task is entity resolution (ER). ER is the process of determining records (mentions) in a database that correspond to the same real-world entity. Traditional pairwise ER methods can lead to inconsistencies and low accuracy due to localized decisions. Leading ER systems solve this problem by collectively resolving all records using a probabilistic graphical model and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inference. However, for large datasets this is an extremely expensive process. One key observation is that, such exhaustive ER process incurs a huge up-front cost, which is wasteful in practice because most users are interested in only a small subset of entities. In this paper, we advocate pay-as-you-go entity resolution by developing a number of query-driven collective ER techniques. We introduce two classes of SQL queries that involve ER operators --- selection-driven ER and join-driven ER. We implement novel variations of the MCMC Metropolis Hastings algorithm to generate biased samples and selectivity-based scheduling algorithms to support the two classes of ER queries. Finally, we show that query-driven ER algorithms can converge and return results within minutes over a database populated with the extraction from a newswire dataset containing 71 million mentions.