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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
9,691 Selectivity Estimation for Queries Containing Predicates over Set-Valued Attributes 2023 SIGMOD 4.3035354e-05
9,693 ROME: Robust Query Optimization via Parallel Multi-Plan Execution 2024 SIGMOD 4.3027391e-05
9,726 Cardinality Estimation of LIKE Predicate Queries using Deep Learning 2025 SIGMOD 4.2943379e-05
9,728 SPACE: Cardinality Estimation for Path Queries Using Cardinality-Aware Sequence-based Learning 2025 SIGMOD 4.2942813e-05
9,743 Databases in the Era of Memory-Centric Computing 2025 CIDR 4.2897489e-05
9,747 Still Asking: How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2025 VLDB 4.2897489e-05
9,763 The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries 2025 VLDB 4.2856106e-05
9,812 A Practical Theory of Generalization in Selectivity Learning 2025 VLDB 4.2783272e-05
9,825 Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement 2025 SIGMOD 4.2751057e-05
9,843 Efficient Algorithms for Cardinality Estimation and Conjunctive Query Evaluation With Simple Degree Constraints 2025 PODS 4.2721228e-05
9,845 Path-centric Cardinality Estimation for Subgraph Matching 2025 VLDB 4.2721228e-05
9,848 Saving Money for Analytical Workloads in the Cloud 2024 VLDB 4.2721228e-05
9,869 Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections 2022 VLDB 4.2675361e-05
9,877 Color: A Framework for Applying Graph Coloring to Subgraph Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 4.2656547e-05
9,878 PRICE: A Pretrained Model for Cross-Database Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 4.2656547e-05
9,892 DBMS Fitting: Why should we learn what we already know? 2020 CIDR 4.261445e-05
9,917 Check Out the Big Brain on BRAD: Simplifying Cloud Data Processing with Learned Automated Data Meshes 2023 VLDB 4.2561557e-05
9,930 Wii: Dynamic Budget Reallocation In Index Tuning 2024 SIGMOD 4.2510122e-05
9,945 SSCard: Substring Cardinality Estimation using Suffix Tree-Guided Learned FM-Index 2026 SIGMOD 4.2432653e-05
9,957 How to Optimize SQL Queries? A Comparison Between Split, Holistic, and Hybrid Approaches 2025 VLDB 4.2373024e-05
9,960 An Elephant Under The Microscope: Analyzing The Interaction Of Optimizer Components In PostgreSQL 2025 SIGMOD 4.2294678e-05
9,988 I Can't Believe It's Not Yannakakis: Pragmatic Bitmap Filters in Microsoft SQL Server 2026 CIDR 4.1945683e-05
9,993 Leveraging Query Optimizers to Verify the Soundness of LLM-based Query Rewrites for Real-World Workloads, and More! 2026 CIDR 4.1945683e-05
10,018 GenJoin: Conditional Generative Plan-to-Plan Query Optimizer that Learns from Subplan Hints 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,032 Rainbow: Risk-aware Index Benefit Estimation Facing Out Of Distribution Workloads 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,034 SieveSketch: A Fine-grained and Adaptive Sketch Framework for Accurate Frequency Estimation 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,047 AgentTune: An Agent-Based Large Language Model Framework for Database Knob Tuning 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,049 Approximate Query Processing under Updates 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,050 APQO: An Adaptive Framework for Parametric Query Optimization 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,093 MCTuner: Spatial Decomposition-Enhanced Database Tuning via LLM-Guided Exploration 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,096 NeuSO: Neural Optimizer for Subgraph Queries 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,104 Query Optimization for Database-Returning Queries 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,112 SEFRQO: A Self-Evolving Fine-Tuned RAG-Based Query Optimizer 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,125 Understanding and Detecting Query Performance Regression in Practical Index Tuning: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,156 Divo: Learning a Stable and Effective Query Optimizer with a Diverse Workload 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,177 InferF: Declarative Factorization of AI/ML Inferences over Joins 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,203 Reqo: A Comprehensive Learning-Based Cost Model for Robust and Explainable Query Optimization 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,212 SQLBarber: A System Leveraging Large Language Models to Generate Customized and Realistic SQL Workloads 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,217 This is Going to Sound Crazy, But What If We Used Large Language Models to Boost Automatic Database Tuning Algorithms By Leveraging Prior History? We Will Find Better Configurations More Quickly Than Retraining From Scratch! 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,219 Practical Parameterized Query Optimization via Efficient Plan Reuse and List-wise Ranking 2026 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,225 LIO: A lightweight and interpretable query optimizer based on an evolutionary forest 2026 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,227 Sample-based Distinct Cardinality Estimation for Multiple Attributes in Multi-Dataset Queries 2026 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,241 Robust Predicate Transfer with Dynamic Execution 2026 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,271 OBELISK: Efficient Offline Query Planning with Bayesian Optimization-Informed Language Model Reasoning 2026 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,283 Hybrid Mixed Integer Linear Programming for Large-Scale Join Order Optimisation 2026 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,284 FlowLog: Efficient and Extensible Datalog via Incrementality 2026 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,288 TATA: An Efficient Framework for Task Transfer in Query Plan Representation 2026 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,372 Data Chunk Compaction in Vectorized Execution 2025 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,435 Demo of LearnedWMP: Workload Memory Prediction Using Deep Query Template Representations 2025 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,445 LpBound in Action: Cardinality Estimation with One-Sided Guarantees 2025 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-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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Semantically Similar Papers

Overall Rank Paper Year Venue Pagerank
423 Measuring the Complexity of Join Enumeration in Query Optimization 1990 VLDB 0.00023669348
4,738 Query Simplification: Graceful Degradation for Join-Order Optimization 2009 SIGMOD 5.9600502e-05
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978 Rapid Bushy Join-order Optimization with Cartesian Products 1996 SIGMOD 0.00014881073
1,619 Adaptive Optimization of Very Large Join Queries 2018 SIGMOD 0.00011111678
5,685 Exact Cardinality Query Optimization with Bounded Execution Cost 2019 SIGMOD 5.3717535e-05
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2,142 Pessimistic Cardinality Estimation: Tighter Upper Bounds for Intermediate Join Cardinalities 2019 SIGMOD 9.4507296e-05
9,747 Still Asking: How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2025 VLDB 4.2897489e-05
4,397 Estimating Compilation Time of a Query Optimizer 2003 SIGMOD 6.2230918e-05