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: 344
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2020
Pagerank: 7.603389e-05
Overall Rank: 3,080 | 78.58%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 19 of 19 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
2,237	Procedural Extensions of SQL: Understanding their usage in the wild	2021	VLDB	9.2212748e-05
3,648	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD	6.8831123e-05
4,648	Aggify: Lifting the Curse of Cursor Loops using Custom Aggregates	2020	SIGMOD	6.0247446e-05
4,924	User-Defined Operators: Efficiently Integrating Custom Algorithms into Modern Databases	2022	VLDB	5.822682e-05
5,731	Babelfish: Efficient Execution of Polyglot Queries	2022	VLDB	5.3502065e-05
6,108	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD	5.2059662e-05
6,189	Accelerating Python UDFs in Vectorized Query Execution	2022	CIDR	5.1647573e-05
6,212	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD	5.1552576e-05
6,645	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD	4.978205e-05
6,692	WeBridge: Synthesizing Stored Procedures for Large-Scale Real-World Web Applications	2024	SIGMOD	4.9599916e-05
6,701	YeSQL: “You extend SQL” with Rich and Highly Performant User-Defined Functions in Relational Databases	2022	VLDB	4.9561066e-05
7,925	Architecting a Query Compiler for Spatial Workloads	2020	SIGMOD	4.6153403e-05
8,583	Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries	2023	VLDB	4.4919445e-05
8,626	Adaptive Code Generation for Data-Intensive Analytics	2021	VLDB	4.4829152e-05
8,692	Boosting Efficiency of External Pipelines by Blurring Application Boundaries	2022	CIDR	4.4661967e-05
9,700	A Fix for the Fixation on Fixpoints	2023	CIDR	4.3013524e-05
9,763	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB	4.2856106e-05
11,288	To UDFs and Beyond: Demonstration of a Fully Decomposed Data Processor for General Data Wrangling Tasks	2023	VLDB	4.1945683e-05
11,427	Accelerating Complex Analytics using Speculation	2021	CIDR	4.1945683e-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
639	Orthogonal Optimization of Subqueries and Aggregation	2001	SIGMOD	0.00018791492
1,108	Froid: Optimization of Imperative Programs in a Relational Database	2018	VLDB	0.00013984276
1,456	Rewriting Procedures for Batched Bindings	2008	VLDB	0.00011899772
12,066	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB	4.1945683e-05

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Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
339	Optimization of Dynamic Query Evaluation Plans	1994	SIGMOD	0.00026851113
14,036	Supporting Procedural Constructs in SQL Compilers	1996	VLDB	-
11,510	Low-Latency Compilation of SQL Queries to Machine Code	2021	VLDB	4.1945683e-05
9,884	SQL Engines Excel at the Execution of Imperative Programs	2024	VLDB	4.2635782e-05
6,645	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD	4.978205e-05
6,212	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD	5.1552576e-05
12,066	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB	4.1945683e-05
4,376	Just-in-time compilation for SQL query processing	2013	VLDB	6.2424797e-05
3,648	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD	6.8831123e-05
6,108	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD	5.2059662e-05