Methods and systems for maintaining a materialized view defined on a relation of a relational database include providing a materialized view maintenance system implemented in a computing device having at least a processor and a memory device. It is determined whether an update to a base relation is irrelevant with respect to the materialized view by performing content-based filtering on the base relation using the materialized view maintenance system. An estimate of at least one of an importance and an effect of the update to the base relation is generated. One or both of performing a load shedding operation on the relational database based upon the estimate and quantifying the effect of the update being omitted from the materialized view based on the estimate is performed. The maintained materialized view is displayed so as to exclude determined irrelevant updates.