Query Optimizers: Time to Rethink the Contract?

Summary: Rethinks the classic optimizer contract: fast, data-agnostic plan search with limited data insight. Proposes using rich usage signals and application input to guide optimization and calls for a research agenda to advance data-driven query optimization. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 4247
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2009
Pagerank: 7.9335187e-05
Overall Rank: 2,944 | 79.81%
DOI: 10.1145/1559845.1559955

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Surajit Chaudhuri (Microsoft)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{chaudhuri_sigmod09,
        title = {{Query Optimizers: Time to Rethink the Contract?}},
        author = {Chaudhuri, Surajit},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '09},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/1559845.1559955},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1559845.1559955},
        year = {2009}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 17 of 17 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
18	How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?	2016	VLDB	0.00059284255
697	Selectivity Estimation for Range Predicates using Lightweight Models	2019	VLDB	0.00014888851
1,279	AI Meets AI: Leveraging Query Executions to Improve Index Recommendations	2019	SIGMOD	0.00011361878
3,158	Solving the Join Ordering Problem via Mixed Integer Linear Programming	2017	SIGMOD	7.6888079e-05
3,162	Efficiently Approximating Selectivity Functions using Low Overhead Regression Models	2020	VLDB	7.6785856e-05
3,513	Variance Aware Optimization of Parameterized Queries	2010	SIGMOD	7.354613e-05
3,598	Access Path Selection in Main-Memory Optimized Data Systems: Should I Scan or Should I Probe?	2017	SIGMOD	7.2718988e-05
4,643	Learned Index Benefits: Machine Learning Based Index Performance Estimation	2022	VLDB	6.5907466e-05
4,880	An Incremental Anytime Algorithm for Multi-Objective Query Optimization	2015	SIGMOD	6.4656221e-05
5,010	Analyzing the Impact of Cardinality Estimation on Execution Plans in Microsoft SQL Server	2023	VLDB	6.4023732e-05
5,137	Exact Cardinality Query Optimization with Bounded Execution Cost	2019	SIGMOD	6.3507372e-05
5,277	FASTgres: Making Learned Query Optimizer Hinting Effective	2023	VLDB	6.2859099e-05
5,394	Leveraging Query Logs and Machine Learning for Parametric Query Optimization	2022	VLDB	6.2336084e-05
7,829	Robust Query Processing: Mission Possible	2020	VLDB	5.5360082e-05
8,163	Learned Offline Query Planning via Bayesian Optimization	2025	SIGMOD	5.4751517e-05
10,016	Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections	2022	VLDB	5.1764556e-05
10,081	Rethink Query Optimization in HTAP Databases	2023	SIGMOD	5.158939e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 24 of 24 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	0.0024089429
53	Eddies: Continuously Adaptive Query Processing	2000	SIGMOD	0.00041071971
54	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.00040810225
89	On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results	1991	SIGMOD	0.00035031529
100	LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer	2001	VLDB	0.00034385207
110	Extensible/Rule Based Query Rewrite Optimization in Starburst	1992	SIGMOD	0.0003309592
136	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00030123303
151	Efficient Mid-Query Re-Optimization of Sub-Optimal Query Execution Plans	1998	SIGMOD	0.00029161879
257	The History of Histograms (abridged)	2003	VLDB	0.00023154793
280	Selectivity Estimation using Probabilistic Models	2001	SIGMOD	0.00022454217
289	Optimization of Dynamic Query Evaluation Plans	1994	SIGMOD	0.00022278876
290	An Overview of Query Optimization in Relational Systems	1998	PODS	0.0002227038
396	R* Optimizer Validation and Performance Evaluation for Local Queries	1986	SIGMOD	0.00019287574
419	Cost-based Query Scrambling for Initial Delays	1998	SIGMOD	0.0001879684
448	Self-tuning Histograms: Building Histograms Without Looking at Data	1999	SIGMOD	0.00018292618
479	Randomized Algorithms For Optimizing Large Join Queries	1990	SIGMOD	0.00017789732
524	Automatic SQL Tuning in Oracle 10g	2004	VLDB	0.00017120666
566	Towards a Robust Query Optimizer: A Principled and Practical Approach	2005	SIGMOD	0.00016436005
664	Exploiting Statistics on Query Expressions for Optimization	2002	SIGMOD	0.00015167825
984	Analyzing Plan Diagrams of Database Query Optimizers	2005	VLDB	0.00012825643
1,936	Consistently Estimating the Selectivity of Conjuncts of Predicates	2005	VLDB	9.4557372e-05
3,093	Statistics on Views	2003	VLDB	7.7664764e-05
4,616	On the Production of Anorexic Plan Diagrams	2007	VLDB	6.6048588e-05
5,365	A Pay-As-You-Go Framework for Query Execution Feedback	2008	VLDB	6.2462467e-05

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