English

LAPRAS : Learning-Augmented PRivate Answering for linear query Streams

Cryptography and Security 2026-05-05 v1 Databases

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 QQ of SS linear queries arriving in uniformly random order under privacy budget (ϵ,δ)(\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 B^\widehat{B} from the first T=Θ(log2S)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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.01960,
  title  = {LAPRAS : Learning-Augmented PRivate Answering for linear query Streams},
  author = {Pranay Mundra and Adam Sealfon and Ziteng Sun and Quanquan C. Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.01960},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

To appear in ICML 2026

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:47:35.248Z