LAPRAS : Learning-Augmented PRivate Answering for linear query Streams.
Pranay Mundra ⋅ Adam Sealfon ⋅ Ziteng Sun ⋅ Quanquan Liu
Abstract
Modern database workloads are highly predictable: query streams are dominated by recurring jobs and templates, even when their arrival order is not known in advance. This motivates a learning-augmented view of online differentially private (DP) analytics: can algorithms utilize predictions about *which* queries will occur to improve utility under a single global privacy budget, while remaining robust when predictions are wrong? We study online DP query answering, where a curator must answer a stream $Q$ of $S$ linear queries arriving in uniformly random order under privacy budget $(\epsilon,\delta)$. We present *LAPRAS*, which assumes access to an oracle that outputs a prediction set of queries likely to appear in the stream and uses it to guide privacy spending. LAPRAS answers predicted queries using the offline-optimal Matrix Mechanism and answers the remaining queries online from a residual budget. To pace spending across an unknown number of unpredicted queries, we introduce *Smooth Allocation*, which forms an unbiased stopping-time estimate $\widehat{B}$ from the first $T=\Theta(\log^2 S)$ unpredicted queries and continuously recalibrates per-query expenditure. Empirically, over two real datasets, we validate the intended consistency--robustness trade-off: LAPRAS achieves near-offline utility under high overlap and degrades gracefully to baseline-level performance when overlap is low.
Successful Page Load