One Model to Rule them All: Towards Zero-Shot Learning for Databases

Summary: Propose zero-shot DB components: one transfer-learned model usable on new databases out-of-the-box, avoiding per-database training and allowing few-shot refinement. Demonstrate feasibility for physical cost estimation with promising results and outline challenges and a roadmap to generalize zero-shot to other DB tasks/systems. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 442
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2022
Pagerank: 6.6819041e-05
Overall Rank: 4,468 | 69.35%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Benjamin Hilprecht (Technical University of Darmstadt)
2. Carsten Binnig (Technical University of Darmstadt)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{hilprecht_cidr22,
        address = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
        series = {{CIDR} '22},
        title = {{One Model to Rule them All: Towards Zero-Shot Learning for Databases}},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Innovative} {Data} {Systems} {Research}},
        author = {Hilprecht, Benjamin and Binnig, Carsten},
        year = {2022}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 17 of 17 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
2,991	FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries	2023	SIGMOD	7.8880723e-05
3,338	Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads	2023	VLDB	7.5068221e-05
4,929	AutoSteer: Learned Query Optimization for Any SQL Database	2023	VLDB	6.4423294e-05
5,767	A Comparative Study and Component Analysis of Query Plan Representation Techniques in ML4DB Studies	2024	VLDB	6.0945741e-05
5,974	Towards instance-optimized data systems	2021	VLDB	6.0230488e-05
6,132	Detect, Distill and Update: Learned DB Systems Facing Out of Distribution Data	2023	SIGMOD	5.9660278e-05
6,997	E2ETune: End-to-End Knob Tuning via Fine-tuned Generative Language Model	2025	VLDB	5.7300324e-05
8,410	Robust and Budget-Constrained Encoding Configurations for In-Memory Database Systems	2022	VLDB	5.4309397e-05
8,494	POLAR: Adaptive and Non-invasive Join Order Selection via Plans of Least Resistance	2024	VLDB	5.4142129e-05
8,572	T3: Accurate and Fast Performance Prediction for Relational Database Systems With Compiled Decision Trees	2025	SIGMOD	5.4102362e-05
8,783	Tiresias: Enabling Predictive Autonomous Storage and Indexing	2022	VLDB	5.3740362e-05
8,849	ByteCard: Enhancing ByteDance’s Data Warehouse with Learned Cardinality Estimation	2024	SIGMOD	5.3577504e-05
9,428	LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization	2025	VLDB	5.2709145e-05
10,028	PRICE: A Pretrained Model for Cross-Database Cardinality Estimation	2025	VLDB	5.1745962e-05
10,586	TATA: An Efficient Framework for Task Transfer in Query Plan Representation	2026	VLDB	5.093636e-05
10,881	Robust Plan Evaluation based on Approximate Probabilistic Machine Learning	2025	VLDB	5.093636e-05
11,073	AXE: A Task Decomposition Approach to Learned LSM Tuning	2025	VLDB	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 19 of 19 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
43	The Case for Learned Index Structures	2018	SIGMOD	0.00046060254
84	Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning	2019	CIDR	0.00035838391
87	Automated Selection of Materialized Views and Indexes for SQL Databases	2000	VLDB	0.00035281619
154	Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer	2019	VLDB	0.00028726181
156	An Efficient, Cost-Driven Index Selection Tool for Microsoft SQL Server	1997	VLDB	0.00028636811
323	DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries!	2020	VLDB	0.00021264788
334	An End-to-End Automatic Cloud Database Tuning System Using Deep Reinforcement Learning	2019	SIGMOD	0.00020875082
401	Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation	2020	VLDB	0.00019092557
447	ALEX: An Updatable Adaptive Learned Index	2020	SIGMOD	0.00018322593
465	An End-to-End Learning-based Cost Estimator	2020	VLDB	0.0001803934
513	NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables	2021	VLDB	0.00017190574
563	Plan-Structured Deep Neural Network Models for Query Performance Prediction	2019	VLDB	0.0001650812
768	Automatic Physical Database Tuning: A Relaxation-based Approach	2005	SIGMOD	0.00014173242
790	FITing-Tree: A Data-aware Index Structure	2019	SIGMOD	0.0001401445
1,174	Tsunami: A Learned Multi-dimensional Index for Correlated Data and Skewed Workloads	2021	VLDB	0.00011817414
1,852	Automated Partitioning Design in Parallel Database Systems	2011	SIGMOD	9.6134443e-05
2,499	Learning a Partitioning Advisor for Cloud Databases	2020	SIGMOD	8.4993549e-05
7,194	Model-Free Control for Distributed Stream Data Processing using Deep Reinforcement Learning	2018	VLDB	5.6766532e-05
10,041	DBMS Fitting: Why should we learn what we already know?	2020	CIDR	5.1709251e-05

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