Compiling PL/SQL Away

Summary: Compile arbitrary PL/SQL functions, including loops and branching, into equivalent SQL subqueries (iteration → SQL recursion) to remove PL/SQL↔SQL context switches. Embedding function logic into the enclosing query enables global optimization and yields substantial cross-RDBMS speedups, challenging the "PL/SQL is slow" belief. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 343
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2020
Pagerank: 8.25952e-05
Overall Rank: 2,684 | 81.59%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Christian Duta (University of Tübingen)
2. Denis Hirn (University of Tübingen)
3. Torsten Grust (University of Tübingen)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{duta_cidr20,
        address = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
        series = {{CIDR} '20},
        title = {{Compiling PL/SQL Away}},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Innovative} {Data} {Systems} {Research}},
        author = {Duta, Christian and Hirn, Denis and Grust, Torsten},
        year = {2020}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 19 of 19 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,892	Procedural Extensions of SQL: Understanding their usage in the wild	2021	VLDB	9.5277793e-05
3,257	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD	7.590651e-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
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
5,828	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD	6.073983e-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
6,475	WeBridge: Synthesizing Stored Procedures for Large-Scale Real-World Web Applications	2024	SIGMOD	5.8687157e-05
8,057	Architecting a Query Compiler for Spatial Workloads	2020	SIGMOD	5.4982831e-05
8,096	Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries	2023	VLDB	5.4875738e-05
8,636	Adaptive Code Generation for Data-Intensive Analytics	2021	VLDB	5.3954959e-05
8,674	Boosting Efficiency of External Pipelines by Blurring Application Boundaries	2022	CIDR	5.3869233e-05
9,833	A Fix for the Fixation on Fixpoints	2023	CIDR	5.2115442e-05
9,917	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB	5.1955087e-05
11,487	To UDFs and Beyond: Demonstration of a Fully Decomposed Data Processor for General Data Wrangling Tasks	2023	VLDB	5.093636e-05
11,625	Accelerating Complex Analytics using Speculation	2021	CIDR	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 4 of 4 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
543	Orthogonal Optimization of Subqueries and Aggregation	2001	SIGMOD	0.0001682612
894	Froid: Optimization of Imperative Programs in a Relational Database	2018	VLDB	0.00013367658
1,261	Rewriting Procedures for Batched Bindings	2008	VLDB	0.0001143305
12,264	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB	5.093636e-05

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7	12,264	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB
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9	3,257	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD
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