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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

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Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 299 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
7,854 dbET: Execution Time Distribution-based Plan Selection 2023 SIGMOD 4.6350172e-05
7,989 RCRank: Multimodal Ranking of Root Causes of Slow Queries in Cloud Database Systems 2025 VLDB 4.6124681e-05
7,990 Blueprinting the Cloud: Unifying and Automatically Optimizing Cloud Data Infrastructures with BRAD 2024 VLDB 4.6117441e-05
8,020 The Holon Approach for Simultaneously Tuning Multiple Components in a Self-Driving Database Management System with Machine Learning via Synthesized Proto-Actions 2024 VLDB 4.6040862e-05
8,026 ADOPT: Adaptively Optimizing Attribute Orders for Worst-Case Optimal Join Algorithms via Reinforcement Learning 2023 VLDB 4.6030518e-05
8,034 Instance-Optimal Acyclic Join Processing Without Regret: Engineering the Yannakakis Algorithm in Column Stores 2025 VLDB 4.6010599e-05
8,047 Thrifty Query Execution via Incrementability 2020 SIGMOD 4.5983505e-05
8,051 Building Advanced SQL Analytics From Low-Level Plan Operators 2021 SIGMOD 4.5969549e-05
8,103 Grep: A Graph Learning Based Database Partitioning System 2023 SIGMOD 4.5852201e-05
8,158 MONSOON: Multi-Step Optimization and Execution of Queries with Partially Obscured Predicates 2020 SIGMOD 4.5730772e-05
8,164 Efficiently Computing Join Orders with Heuristic Search 2023 SIGMOD 4.5718104e-05
8,186 E2ETune: End-to-End Knob Tuning via Fine-tuned Generative Language Model 2025 VLDB 4.5651684e-05
8,199 Leveraging Dynamic and Heterogeneous Workload Knowledge to Boost the Performance of Index Advisors 2024 VLDB 4.5605795e-05
8,207 SQLStorm: Taking Database Benchmarking into the LLM Era 2025 VLDB 4.5583637e-05
8,213 On the Calculation of Optimality Ranges for Relational Query Execution Plans 2018 SIGMOD 4.557937e-05
8,350 alpha to omega: The Greek Alphabet of Sampling 2020 CIDR 4.5404832e-05
8,417 The Case for Learned In-Memory Joins 2023 VLDB 4.5194164e-05
8,448 PARQO: Penalty-Aware Robust Plan Selection in Query Optimization 2024 VLDB 4.5100508e-05
8,479 Excalibur: A Virtual Machine for Adaptive Fine-grained JIT-Compiled Query Execution based on VOILA 2023 VLDB 4.5014929e-05
8,488 Can Large Language Models Be Query Optimizer for Relational Databases? 2026 SIGMOD 4.4998609e-05
8,502 Conditional Cuckoo Filters 2021 SIGMOD 4.4972336e-05
8,576 PostCENN: PostgreSQL with Machine Learning Models for Cardinality Estimation 2021 VLDB 4.4927989e-05
8,600 Making RDBMSs Efficient on Graph Workloads Through Predefined Joins 2022 VLDB 4.4876776e-05
8,615 The Case for NLP-Enhanced Database Tuning: Towards Tuning Tools that "Read the Manual" 2021 VLDB 4.484683e-05
8,639 A Concave Path to Low-overhead Robust Query Processing 2018 VLDB 4.4793681e-05
8,659 Learned Offline Query Planning via Bayesian Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 4.4722928e-05
8,680 A Practical Approach to Groupjoin and Nested Aggregates 2021 VLDB 4.4694927e-05
8,697 Convolution and Cross-Correlation of Count Sketches Enables Fast Cardinality Estimation of Multi-Join Queries 2024 SIGMOD 4.4657888e-05
8,703 Workload-driven, Lazy Discovery of Data Dependencies for Query Optimization 2022 CIDR 4.4647237e-05
8,718 Parachute: Single-Pass Bi-Directional Information Passing 2025 VLDB 4.4612599e-05
8,775 SkinnerMT: Parallelizing for Efficiency and Robustness in Adaptive Query Processing on Multicore Platforms 2023 VLDB 4.4553047e-05
8,798 Resource-Adaptive Query Execution with Paged Memory Management 2025 CIDR 4.4489415e-05
8,834 ByteCard: Enhancing ByteDance’s Data Warehouse with Learned Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 4.4394021e-05
8,948 One Seed, Two Birds: A Unified Learned Structure for Exact and Approximate Counting 2024 SIGMOD 4.423786e-05
9,031 Extending SQL to Return a Subdatabase 2025 SIGMOD 4.4039656e-05
9,041 TreeSensing: Linearly Compressing Sketches with Flexibility 2023 SIGMOD 4.4039656e-05
9,082 JoinSketch: A Sketch Algorithm for Accurate and Unbiased Inner-Product Estimation 2023 SIGMOD 4.3998984e-05
9,108 BASE: Bridging the Gap between Cost and Latency for Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 4.3950066e-05
9,187 POLAR: Adaptive and Non-invasive Join Order Selection via Plans of Least Resistance 2024 VLDB 4.3780059e-05
9,213 PACE: Poisoning Attacks on Learned Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 4.3721075e-05
9,238 Optimizing Disjunctive Queries with Tagged Execution 2024 SIGMOD 4.3690661e-05
9,277 DBG-PT: A Large Language Model Assisted Query Performance Regression Debugger 2024 VLDB 4.3640804e-05
9,317 Are Joins over LSM-trees Ready? Take RocksDB as an Example 2025 VLDB 4.3556432e-05
9,345 LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 4.3536343e-05
9,352 Db2une: Tuning Under Pressure via Deep Learning 2024 VLDB 4.3522361e-05
9,364 FEBench: A Benchmark for Real-Time Relational Data Feature Extraction 2023 VLDB 4.3502487e-05
9,380 Small Selectivities Matter: Lifting the Burden of Empty Samples 2021 SIGMOD 4.3461329e-05
9,388 CEDA: Learned Cardinality Estimation with Domain Adaptation 2023 VLDB 4.3443083e-05
9,587 Low Rank Learning for Offline Query Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 4.3215645e-05
9,662 Efficient Query Re-optimization with Judicious Subquery Selections 2023 SIGMOD 4.3097631e-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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