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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 49 of 299 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
10,459 UDFBench: A Tool for Benchmarking UDF Queries on SQL Engines 2025 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,461 Virtualizing Cloud Data Infrastructures with BRAD 2025 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,468 AJOSC: Adaptive Join Order Selection for Continuous Queries 2025 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,528 Two Birds with One Stone: Efficient Deep Learning over Mislabeled Data through Subset Selection 2025 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,551 Avoiding Materialisation for Guarded Aggregate Queries 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,565 Holistic query Approximation via RL Modeling 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,568 QOVIS: Understanding and Diagnosing Query Optimizer via a Visualization-assisted Approach 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,590 ACE: A Cardinality Estimator for Set-Valued Queries 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,591 Accio: Bolt-on Query Federation 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,616 Unraveling the Impact of Window Semantics: Optimizing Join Order for Efficient Stream Processing 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,619 Data-Agnostic Cardinality Learning from Imperfect Workloads 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,627 Robust Plan Evaluation based on Approximate Probabilistic Machine Learning 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,630 Conformal Prediction for Verifiable Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,633 AQETuner: Reliable Query-level Configuration Tuning for Analytical Query Engines 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,635 Saving Private Hash Join 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,699 The Accuracy of Cardinality Estimators: Unraveling the Evaluation Result Conundrum 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,707 PBench: Workload Synthesizer with Real Statistics for Cloud Analytics Benchmarking 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,724 Privacy-Enhanced Database Synthesis for Benchmark Publishing 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,726 Improving DBMS Scheduling Decisions with Accurate Performance Prediction on Concurrent Queries 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,751 PAR2QO: Parametric Penalty-Aware Robust Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,756 Selective Late Materialization in Modern Analytical Databases 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,774 Automatic Indexing in Oracle 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,790 SQL:Trek Automated Index Design at Airbnb 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,808 Hint-QPT: Hints for Robust Query Performance Tuning 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,832 A Demonstration of Q2O: Quantum-augmented Query Optimizer 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,833 Cardinality Estimation for Similarity Search on High-Dimensional Data Objects: The Impact of Reference Objects 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,840 Learned Cost Models for Query Optimization: From Batch to Streaming Systems 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,841 Filtered Vector Search: State-of-the-art and Research Opportunities 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,852 CloudGlide: Deconstructing the Landscape of Cloud-Based Analytics 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,859 Graph Transformers for Query Plan Representation: Potentials and Challenges 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,860 Exploring Exploratory Querying 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,868 LEAP: A Low-cost Spark SQL Query Optimizer using Pairwise Comparison 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,872 LASER: Buffer-Aware Learned Query Scheduling in Master-Standby Databases 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,880 RankPQO: Learning-to-Rank for Parametric Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
10,942 Sub-optimal Join Order Identification with L1-error 2024 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,983 A Universal Sketch for Estimating Heavy Hitters and Per-Element Frequency Moments in Data Streams with Bounded Deletions 2024 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,987 DPconv: Super-Polynomially Faster Join Ordering 2024 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,989 High-Performance Query Processing with NVMe Arrays: Spilling without Killing Performance 2024 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,993 SPID-Join: A Skew-resistant Processing-in-DIMM Join Algorithm Exploiting the Bank- and Rank-level Parallelisms of DIMMs 2024 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
10,994 Towards a Converged Relational-Graph Optimization Framework 2024 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
11,084 Presto’s History-based Query Optimizer 2024 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
11,190 Efficient and Effective Cardinality Estimation for Skyline Family 2023 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
11,212 SH2O: Efficient Data Access for Work-Sharing Databases 2023 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
11,254 Asymptotically Better Query Optimization Using Indexed Algebra 2023 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
11,350 DeepO: A Learned Query Optimizer 2022 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
11,398 AutoDI: Towards an Automatic Plan Regression Analysis 2022 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
11,531 Fangorn: Adaptive Execution Framework for Heterogeneous Workloads on Shared Clusters 2021 VLDB 4.1945683e-05
11,652 Recommending Deployment Strategies in Crowdsourcing Platforms 2019 SIGMOD 4.1945683e-05
11,698 Tighter Upper Bounds for Join Cardinality Estimates 2018 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
454 An Overview of Query Optimization in Relational Systems 1998 PODS 0.00022734812
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
8,213 On the Calculation of Optimality Ranges for Relational Query Execution Plans 2018 SIGMOD 4.557937e-05
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