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Measuring the Complexity of Join Enumeration in Query Optimization

Summary: Introduces Starburst to measure and tune the optimizer's join-search space by enabling/disabling composite tables and Cartesian joins. Analytic counts match experiments; linear chain queries are polynomial-time via DP (System R/R*), while non-linear shapes blow up combinatorially. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID
7954
Venue
VLDB
Year
1990
Pagerank
0.00023654556
Overall Rank
422 | 97.07%
DOI
-

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 42 of 42 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
285 Automating Physical Database Design in a Parallel Database 2002 SIGMOD 0.00028978423
342 Optimization of Dynamic Query Evaluation Plans 1994 SIGMOD 0.00026836424
454 An Overview of Query Optimization in Relational Systems 1998 PODS 0.00022796106
867 Query Optimization in the Presence of Limited Access Patterns 1999 SIGMOD 0.00015757737
904 Fundamental Techniques for Order Optimization 1996 SIGMOD 0.00015425636
979 Rapid Bushy Join-order Optimization with Cartesian Products 1996 SIGMOD 0.00014871114
1,825 Analysis of Two Existing and One New Dynamic Programming Algorithm for the Generation of Optimal Bushy Join Trees without Cross Products 2006 VLDB 0.00010392367
1,930 Reusing Invariants: A New Strategy for Correlated Queries 1998 SIGMOD 0.00010052743
2,051 Optimization of Multi-Way Join Queries for Parallel Execution 1991 VLDB 9.6871984e-05
2,053 Optimal Top-Down Join Enumeration 2007 SIGMOD 9.682841e-05
2,268 Extending the Search Strategy in a Query Optimizer 1991 VLDB 9.1524415e-05
2,652 Multi-Objective Parametric Query Optimization 2015 VLDB 8.3662031e-05
2,778 Counter Strike: Generic Top-Down Join Enumeration for Hypergraphs 2013 VLDB 8.1345892e-05
2,878 The Complexity of Transformation-Based Join Enumeration 1997 VLDB 7.9694937e-05
2,914 Quantifying TPC-H Choke Points and Their Optimizations 2020 VLDB 7.9197583e-05
2,928 Shared Workload Optimization 2014 VLDB 7.881485e-05
3,053 Fast, Randomized Join-Order Selection — Why Use Transformations? 1994 VLDB 7.6482987e-05
3,125 Holistic Twig Joins on Indexed XML Documents 2003 VLDB 7.5228453e-05
3,150 The MemSQL Query Optimizer: A modern optimizer for real-time analytics in a distributed database 2016 VLDB 7.4765759e-05
3,407 EROC: A Toolkit for Building NEATO Query Optimizers 1996 VLDB 7.1253175e-05
3,424 Multi-Join Optimization for Symmetric Multiprocessors 1993 VLDB 7.1066545e-05
3,476 Solving the Join Ordering Problem via Mixed Integer Linear Programming 2017 SIGMOD 7.0560383e-05
3,563 Counting, Enumerating, and Sampling of Execution Plans in a Cost-Based Query Optimizer 2000 SIGMOD 6.9686532e-05
3,729 Cost-based or Learning-based? A Hybrid Query Optimizer for Query Plan Selection 2022 VLDB 6.8078013e-05
4,255 Parallelizing Query Optimization 2008 VLDB 6.3080082e-05
4,390 Estimating Compilation Time of a Query Optimizer 2003 SIGMOD 6.2193128e-05
4,503 Of Snowstorms and Bushy Trees 2014 VLDB 6.131076e-05
4,734 Query Simplification: Graceful Degradation for Join-Order Optimization 2009 SIGMOD 5.9553181e-05
5,195 Bitvector-aware Query Optimization for Decision Support Queries 2020 SIGMOD 5.6314278e-05
6,336 Dependency-Aware Reordering for Parallelizing Query Optimization in Multi-Core CPUs 2009 SIGMOD 5.1009488e-05
6,438 Optimizing Join Enumeration in Transformation-based Query Optimizers 2014 VLDB 5.0552953e-05
6,541 On the Complexity of Generating Optimal Plans with Cross Products (extended abstract) 1997 PODS 5.0160682e-05
8,149 Efficiently Computing Join Orders with Heuristic Search 2023 SIGMOD 4.5715614e-05
8,192 The Fittest Survives: An Adaptive Approach to Query Optimization 1995 VLDB 4.5575625e-05
8,193 On the Calculation of Optimality Ranges for Relational Query Execution Plans 2018 SIGMOD 4.5575291e-05
8,660 Learned Offline Query Planning via Bayesian Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 4.4680058e-05
9,312 Parallelizing Query Optimization on Shared-Nothing Architectures 2016 VLDB 4.353536e-05
9,956 How to Optimize SQL Queries? A Comparison Between Split, Holistic, and Hybrid Approaches 2025 VLDB 4.2332427e-05
10,990 DPconv: Super-Polynomially Faster Join Ordering 2024 SIGMOD 4.1905499e-05
11,628 Towards Multi-way Join Aware Optimizer in SAP HANA 2020 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
11,731 Errata for "Analysis of two existing and one new dynamic programming algorithm for the generation of optimal bushy join trees without cross products" 2018 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
12,754 TOPAZ: a Cost-Based, Rule-Driven, Multi-Phase Parallelizer 1998 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 7 of 7 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 0.0040465394
144 Optimization of Nonrecursive Queries 1986 VLDB 0.00041430126
220 Grammar-like Functional Rules for Representing Query Optimization Alternatives 1988 SIGMOD 0.00033312045
388 Optimization of Large Join Queries 1988 SIGMOD 0.00024654816
1,700 An Architecture For Query Optimization 1982 SIGMOD 0.00010842044
2,784 Optimization of Nested Queries in a Distributed Relational Database 1984 VLDB 8.1263312e-05
4,093 Implementing an Interpreter for Functional Rules in a Query Optimizer 1988 VLDB 6.4521318e-05
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7,165 Ranked Enumeration of Join Queries with Projections 2022 VLDB 4.807833e-05
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2,051 Optimization of Multi-Way Join Queries for Parallel Execution 1991 VLDB 9.6871984e-05
71 How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2016 VLDB 0.00059446482
4,390 Estimating Compilation Time of a Query Optimizer 2003 SIGMOD 6.2193128e-05
2,878 The Complexity of Transformation-Based Join Enumeration 1997 VLDB 7.9694937e-05