Xue Jiang, Ge Li, Jiaru Qian, Xianjie Shi, Chenjie Li, Hao Zhu, Ziyu Wang, Jielun Zhang, Zeyu Zhao, Kechi Zhang, Jia Li, Wenpin Jiao, Zhi Jin, Yihong Dong. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2026.

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In this work, we demonstrate CaJaDE (Context-Aware Join-Augmented Deep Explanations), a system that explains query results by augmenting provenance with contextual information from other related tables in the database. Given two query results whose difference the user wants to understand, we enumerate possible ways of joining the provenance (i.e., contributing input tuples) of these two query results with tuples from other relevant tables in the database that were not used in the query. We use patterns to concisely explain the difference between the augmented provenance of the two query results. CaJaDE, through a comprehensive UI, enables the user to formulate questions and explore explanations interactively.

In many data analysis applications there is a need to explain why a surprising or interesting result was produced by a query. Previous approaches to explaining results have directly or indirectly relied on data provenance, i.e., input tuples contributing to the result(s) of interest. However, some information that is relevant for explaining an answer may not be contained in the provenance. We propose a new approach for explaining query results by augmenting provenance with information from other related tables in the database. Using a suite of optimization techniques, we demonstrate experimentally using real datasets and through a user study that our approach produces meaningful results and is efficient.

In this demonstration we showcase Cape, a system that explains surprising aggregation outcomes. In contrast to previous work, which relies exclusively on provenance, Cape explains outliers in aggregation queries through related outliers in the opposite direction that provide counterbalance . The foundation of our approach are aggregate regression patterns (ARPs) that describe coarse-grained trends in the data. We define outliers as deviations from such patterns and present an efficient algorithm to find counterbalances explaining outliers. In the demonstration, the audience can run aggregation queries over real world datasets, identify outliers of interest in the result of such queries, and browse the patterns and explanations returned by Cape.