Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries

Summary: Tutorial on bridging the execution-model mismatch between SQL engines and UDFs. Surveys physical optimization and compilation techniques, compares recent systems, and highlights open gaps and research directions for analytics/ML workloads. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID: 13405
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2023
Pagerank: 5.4875738e-05
Overall Rank: 8,096 | 44.46%
DOI: 10.14778/3611540.3611574

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Yannis Foufoulas (Athena Research Center; University of Athens)
2. Alkis Simitsis (Athena Research Center)

BibTeX Citation

@article{foufoulas_vldb23,
        title = {{Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries}},
        author = {Foufoulas, Yannis and Simitsis, Alkis},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '23},
        volume = {16},
        number = {12},
        pages = {3874--3877},
        doi = {10.14778/3611540.3611574},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3611540.3611574},
        year = {2023}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
6,614	Mitigating the Impedance Mismatch between Prediction Query Execution and Database Engine	2025	SIGMOD	5.8216658e-05
9,917	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB	5.1955087e-05
9,997	HyperBlocker: Accelerating Rule-based Blocking in Entity Resolution using GPUs	2025	VLDB	5.1814573e-05
10,232	EncoderForge: Generating Efficient SQL for Encoders in Machine Learning Inference Pipelines	2026	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
10,740	UDFBench: A Tool for Benchmarking UDF Queries on SQL Engines	2025	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
10,751	Approximating Opaque Top-k Queries	2025	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05

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
649	Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Compiled and Vectorized Queries But Were Afraid to Ask	2018	VLDB	0.00015320656
894	Froid: Optimization of Imperative Programs in a Relational Database	2018	VLDB	0.00013367658
1,229	Weld: A Common Runtime for High Performance Data Analytics	2017	CIDR	0.00011578425
1,442	An Architecture for Compiling UDF-centric Workflows	2015	VLDB	0.00010778486
1,768	Tuplex: Data Science in Python at Native Code Speed	2021	SIGMOD	9.8041636e-05
2,293	Extending Relational Query Processing with ML Inference	2020	CIDR	8.7949378e-05
2,316	Evaluating End-to-End Optimization for Data Analytics Applications in Weld	2018	VLDB	8.7596739e-05
2,651	Magpie: Python at Speed and Scale using Cloud Backends	2021	CIDR	8.2918086e-05
2,684	Compiling PL/SQL Away	2020	CIDR	8.25952e-05
2,847	AIDA - Abstraction for Advanced In-Database Analytics	2018	VLDB	8.0583142e-05
2,939	Extracting Equivalent SQL from Imperative Code in Database Applications	2016	SIGMOD	7.9395908e-05
3,205	On Optimizing Operator Fusion Plans for Large-Scale Machine Learning in SystemML	2018	VLDB	7.6386536e-05
3,992	Aggify: Lifting the Curse of Cursor Loops using Custom Aggregates	2020	SIGMOD	6.9695338e-05
4,273	User-Defined Operators: Efficiently Integrating Custom Algorithms into Modern Databases	2022	VLDB	6.7909197e-05
4,292	Putting Pandas in a Box	2021	CIDR	6.7784325e-05
5,301	Babelfish: Efficient Execution of Polyglot Queries	2022	VLDB	6.2750553e-05
5,684	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD	6.1224825e-05
5,791	Accelerating Python UDFs in Vectorized Query Execution	2022	CIDR	6.0873094e-05
6,314	YeSQL: "You extend SQL" with Rich and Highly Performant User-Defined Functions in Relational Databases	2022	VLDB	5.9157364e-05
6,328	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD	5.9113895e-05
6,604	Machine Learning, Linear Algebra, and More: Is SQL All You Need?	2022	CIDR	5.8240599e-05
8,674	Boosting Efficiency of External Pipelines by Blurring Application Boundaries	2022	CIDR	5.3869233e-05
13,601	BabbleFlow - A Translator for Analytic Data Flow Programs	2014	SIGMOD	-

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	4,896	User-Defined Aggregate Functions: Bridging Theory and Practice	2006	SIGMOD
2	12,510	Fast and Dynamic OLAP Exploration Using UDFs	2009	SIGMOD
3	1,442	An Architecture for Compiling UDF-centric Workflows	2015	VLDB
4	6,015	Dear User-Defined Functions, Inlining isn't working out so great for us. Let's try batching to make our relationship work. Sincerely, SQL	2024	CIDR
5	4,273	User-Defined Operators: Efficiently Integrating Custom Algorithms into Modern Databases	2022	VLDB
6	3,945	Exploiting Correlations for Expensive Predicate Evaluation	2015	SIGMOD
7	10,740	UDFBench: A Tool for Benchmarking UDF Queries on SQL Engines	2025	SIGMOD
8	5,791	Accelerating Python UDFs in Vectorized Query Execution	2022	CIDR
9	6,328	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD
10	9,917	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB