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How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?

Summary: Introduces the Join Order Benchmark (JOB) to test optimizer components on real-world, multi-join workloads. Cardinality estimators are error-prone; cost models matter less than estimates; exhaustive dynamic programming improves plan quality over heuristics under poor cardinality. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID
11313
Venue
VLDB
Year
2016
Pagerank
0.00059038975
Overall Rank
71 | 99.51%
DOI
-

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 299 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
3,658 Towards a Hands-Free Query Optimizer through Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 6.8704209e-05
3,702 Every Row Counts: Combining Sketches and Sampling for Accurate Group-By Result Estimates 2019 CIDR 6.8295759e-05
3,721 To Partition, or Not to Partition, That is the Join Question in a Real System 2021 SIGMOD 6.8179379e-05
3,725 Estimating Cardinalities with Deep Sketches 2019 SIGMOD 6.8170734e-05
3,727 Cost-based or Learning-based? A Hybrid Query Optimizer for Query Plan Selection 2022 VLDB 6.8141709e-05
3,778 A Learned Sketch for Subgraph Counting 2021 SIGMOD 6.7747398e-05
3,812 Facilitating Database Tuning with Hyper-Parameter Optimization: A Comprehensive Experimental Evaluation 2022 VLDB 6.7373184e-05
3,922 Pushing Data-Induced Predicates Through Joins in Big-Data Clusters 2020 VLDB 6.6291079e-05
3,924 A Unified Deep Model of Learning from both Data and Queries for Cardinality Estimation 2021 SIGMOD 6.6271553e-05
3,990 FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries 2023 SIGMOD 6.5581983e-05
4,012 Columnar Storage and List-based Processing for Graph Database Management Systems 2021 VLDB 6.5335884e-05
4,127 A Statistical Perspective on Discovering Functional Dependencies in Noisy Data 2020 SIGMOD 6.4310458e-05
4,158 Performance-Optimal Filtering: Bloom Overtakes Cuckoo at High Throughput 2019 VLDB 6.3994318e-05
4,174 Computation Reuse in Analytics Job Service at Microsoft 2018 SIGMOD 6.3856219e-05
4,276 Looking Ahead Makes Query Plans Robust: Making the Initial Case with In-Memory Star Schema Data Warehouse Workloads 2017 VLDB 6.2976602e-05
4,284 HTAP Databases: What is New and What is Next 2022 SIGMOD 6.2914924e-05
4,359 Astrid: Accurate Selectivity Estimation for String Predicates using Deep Learning 2021 VLDB 6.2569955e-05
4,375 Sample Debiasing in the Themis Open World Database System 2020 SIGMOD 6.2427076e-05
4,417 Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads 2023 VLDB 6.2037371e-05
4,434 Lightweight and Accurate Cardinality Estimation by Neural Network Gaussian Process 2022 SIGMOD 6.1929999e-05
4,462 LOGER: A Learned Optimizer towards Generating Efficient and Robust Query Execution Plans 2023 VLDB 6.1611784e-05
4,523 Simplicity Done Right for Join Ordering 2021 CIDR 6.1135504e-05
4,543 FACE: A Normalizing Flow based Cardinality Estimator 2022 VLDB 6.1011198e-05
4,571 Adaptive Statistics in Oracle 12c 2017 VLDB 6.0773174e-05
4,590 MB2: Decomposed Behavior Modeling for Self-Driving Database Management Systems 2021 SIGMOD 6.0620053e-05
4,593 Auto-WLM: Machine Learning Enhanced Workload Management in Amazon Redshift 2023 SIGMOD 6.0606891e-05
4,623 Automated Generation of Materialized Views in Oracle 2020 VLDB 6.0411909e-05
4,661 PreQR: Pre-training Representation for SQL Understanding 2022 SIGMOD 6.0137947e-05
4,690 Deploying a Steered Query Optimizer in Production at Microsoft 2022 SIGMOD 5.997226e-05
4,704 JSON Tiles: Fast Analytics on Semi-Structured Data 2021 SIGMOD 5.9853687e-05
4,842 Towards Dynamic and Safe Configuration Tuning for Cloud Databases 2022 SIGMOD 5.8826802e-05
4,913 UDO: Universal Database Optimization using Reinforcement Learning 2021 VLDB 5.8316231e-05
4,999 Adaptive Work Placement for Query Processing on Heterogeneous Computing Resources 2017 VLDB 5.7752801e-05
5,023 GenRewrite: Query Rewriting via Large Language Models 2026 SIGMOD 5.75363e-05
5,077 HyperBench: A Benchmark and Tool for Hypergraphs and Empirical Findings 2019 PODS 5.7153846e-05
5,104 Guaranteeing the O~(AGM/OUT) Runtime for Uniform Sampling and Size Estimation over Joins 2023 PODS 5.6946113e-05
5,113 Columnstore and B+ tree – Are Hybrid Physical Designs Important? 2018 SIGMOD 5.687445e-05
5,125 The Art of Balance: A RateupDBTM Experience of Building a CPU/GPU Hybrid Database Product 2021 VLDB 5.679423e-05
5,315 Cuckoo Index: A Lightweight Secondary Index Structure 2020 VLDB 5.5723424e-05
5,334 LEON: A New Framework for ML-Aided Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 5.5649836e-05
5,337 Learned Index Benefits: Machine Learning Based Index Performance Estimation 2022 VLDB 5.5635208e-05
5,423 Kepler: Robust Learning for Faster Parametric Query Optimization 2023 SIGMOD 5.5130233e-05
5,473 Facilitating SQL Query Composition and Analysis 2020 SIGMOD 5.4885366e-05
5,509 Can Large Language Models Predict Data Correlations from Column Names? 2023 VLDB 5.4703368e-05
5,530 Permutable Compiled Queries: Dynamically Adapting Compiled Queries without Recompiling 2021 VLDB 5.4554282e-05
5,535 Lightweight Cardinality Estimation in LSM-based Systems 2018 SIGMOD 5.4539235e-05
5,633 Analyzing the Impact of Cardinality Estimation on Execution Plans in Microsoft SQL Server 2023 VLDB 5.4011156e-05
5,637 Database Workload Characterization with Query Plan Encoders 2022 VLDB 5.3979505e-05
5,640 AutoSteer: Learned Query Optimization for Any SQL Database 2023 VLDB 5.3933314e-05
5,645 Warper: Efficiently Adapting Learned Cardinality Estimators to Data and Workload Drifts 2022 SIGMOD 5.3923454e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 23 of 23 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
1 Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System 1979 SIGMOD 0.0040449103
99 On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results 1991 SIGMOD 0.00050022914
141 Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption 1997 VLDB 0.00041786333
182 LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer 2001 VLDB 0.00036962631
224 CORDS: Automatic Discovery of Correlations and Soft Functional Dependencies 2004 SIGMOD 0.00032746205
268 R* Optimizer Validation and Performance Evaluation for Local Queries 1986 SIGMOD 0.00029662304
325 The History of Histograms (abridged) 2003 VLDB 0.00027378328
629 Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors 2009 VLDB 0.00018942366
684 Towards a Robust Query Optimizer: A Principled and Practical Approach 2005 SIGMOD 0.00018179769
1,300 The Picasso Database Query Optimizer Visualizer 2010 VLDB 0.00012733214
1,341 Dynamic Programming Strikes Back 2008 SIGMOD 0.00012486285
1,547 Lightweight Graphical Models for Selectivity Estimation Without Independence Assumptions 2011 VLDB 0.00011442359
2,356 Consistently Estimating the Selectivity of Conjuncts of Predicates 2005 VLDB 8.9620762e-05
2,377 CS2: A New Database Synopsis for Query Estimation 2013 SIGMOD 8.9402115e-05
2,631 Plan Bouquets: Query Processing without Selectivity Estimation 2014 SIGMOD 8.4101843e-05
2,742 Cache-Efficient Aggregation: Hashing Is Sorting 2015 SIGMOD 8.1906104e-05
2,785 Counter Strike: Generic Top-Down Join Enumeration for Hypergraphs 2013 VLDB 8.1286814e-05
3,021 Adaptive and Big Data Scale Parallel Execution in Oracle 2013 VLDB 7.6991391e-05
3,408 Query Optimizers: Time to Rethink the Contract? 2009 SIGMOD 7.1288167e-05
3,952 Exact Cardinality Query Optimization for Optimizer Testing 2009 VLDB 6.5939652e-05
4,511 Of Snowstorms and Bushy Trees 2014 VLDB 6.1247645e-05
4,738 Query Simplification: Graceful Degradation for Join-Order Optimization 2009 SIGMOD 5.9600502e-05
6,874 ROX: Run-time Optimization of XQueries 2009 SIGMOD 4.8978984e-05
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