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: 7.5960713e-05
Overall Rank: 3,085 | 78.57%
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
2,242	Procedural Extensions of SQL: Understanding their usage in the wild	2021	VLDB	9.2124242e-05
3,649	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD	6.8764882e-05
4,645	Aggify: Lifting the Curse of Cursor Loops using Custom Aggregates	2020	SIGMOD	6.0190618e-05
4,930	User-Defined Operators: Efficiently Integrating Custom Algorithms into Modern Databases	2022	VLDB	5.8171482e-05
5,741	Babelfish: Efficient Execution of Polyglot Queries	2022	VLDB	5.3450701e-05
6,112	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD	5.2009649e-05
6,191	Accelerating Python UDFs in Vectorized Query Execution	2022	CIDR	5.1598046e-05
6,211	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD	5.1503069e-05
6,646	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD	4.9734285e-05
6,694	WeBridge: Synthesizing Stored Procedures for Large-Scale Real-World Web Applications	2024	SIGMOD	4.9552327e-05
6,703	YeSQL: “You extend SQL” with Rich and Highly Performant User-Defined Functions in Relational Databases	2022	VLDB	4.9514593e-05
7,925	Architecting a Query Compiler for Spatial Workloads	2020	SIGMOD	4.610914e-05
8,580	Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries	2023	VLDB	4.4876382e-05
8,623	Adaptive Code Generation for Data-Intensive Analytics	2021	VLDB	4.4786182e-05
8,689	Boosting Efficiency of External Pipelines by Blurring Application Boundaries	2022	CIDR	4.4619184e-05
9,699	A Fix for the Fixation on Fixpoints	2023	CIDR	4.2972307e-05
9,765	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB	4.2815042e-05
11,290	To UDFs and Beyond: Demonstration of a Fully Decomposed Data Processor for General Data Wrangling Tasks	2023	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
11,430	Accelerating Complex Analytics using Speculation	2021	CIDR	4.1905499e-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
640	Orthogonal Optimization of Subqueries and Aggregation	2001	SIGMOD	0.00018780632
1,107	Froid: Optimization of Imperative Programs in a Relational Database	2018	VLDB	0.0001397627
1,457	Rewriting Procedures for Batched Bindings	2008	VLDB	0.00011891025
12,074	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB	4.1905499e-05

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Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
342	Optimization of Dynamic Query Evaluation Plans	1994	SIGMOD	0.00026836424
14,050	Supporting Procedural Constructs in SQL Compilers	1996	VLDB	-
11,514	Low-Latency Compilation of SQL Queries to Machine Code	2021	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
9,883	SQL Engines Excel at the Execution of Imperative Programs	2024	VLDB	4.2594931e-05
6,646	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD	4.9734285e-05
6,211	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD	5.1503069e-05
12,074	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
4,373	Just-in-time compilation for SQL query processing	2013	VLDB	6.2365066e-05
3,649	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD	6.8764882e-05
6,112	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD	5.2009649e-05