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: h0de1100d76e9baea
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2022
Pagerank: 6.553705e-05
Overall Rank: 4,538 | 69.50%
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
2,846	FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries	2023	SIGMOD	7.9453616e-05
3,327	Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads	2023	VLDB	7.4207879e-05
4,683	AutoSteer: Learned Query Optimization for Any SQL Database	2023	VLDB	6.4716143e-05
5,481	A Comparative Study and Component Analysis of Query Plan Representation Techniques in ML4DB Studies	2024	VLDB	6.1125124e-05
5,716	Detect, Distill and Update: Learned DB Systems Facing Out of Distribution Data	2023	SIGMOD	6.0194657e-05
5,974	Towards instance-optimized data systems	2021	VLDB	5.9305575e-05
7,070	E2ETune: End-to-End Knob Tuning via Fine-tuned Generative Language Model	2025	VLDB	5.6080535e-05
7,410	POLAR: Adaptive and Non-invasive Join Order Selection via Plans of Least Resistance	2024	VLDB	5.5342768e-05
7,460	T3: Accurate and Fast Performance Prediction for Relational Database Systems With Compiled Decision Trees	2025	SIGMOD	5.5215755e-05
8,563	Robust and Budget-Constrained Encoding Configurations for In-Memory Database Systems	2022	VLDB	5.3138647e-05
8,872	Tiresias: Enabling Predictive Autonomous Storage and Indexing	2022	VLDB	5.2584643e-05
9,012	ByteCard: Enhancing ByteDance’s Data Warehouse with Learned Cardinality Estimation	2024	SIGMOD	5.2375369e-05
9,610	LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization	2025	VLDB	5.1526493e-05
10,216	PRICE: A Pretrained Model for Cross-Database Cardinality Estimation	2025	VLDB	5.0584922e-05
10,924	TATA: An Efficient Framework for Task Transfer in Query Plan Representation	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,283	Robust Plan Evaluation based on Approximate Probabilistic Machine Learning	2025	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,430	AXE: A Task Decomposition Approach to Learned LSM Tuning	2025	VLDB	4.9793485e-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
40	The Case for Learned Index Structures	2018	SIGMOD	0.00046284649
85	Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning	2019	CIDR	0.00035864347
88	Automated Selection of Materialized Views and Indexes for SQL Databases	2000	VLDB	0.00035351639
145	Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer	2019	VLDB	0.0002908188
151	An Efficient, Cost-Driven Index Selection Tool for Microsoft SQL Server	1997	VLDB	0.00028672526
314	An End-to-End Automatic Cloud Database Tuning System Using Deep Reinforcement Learning	2019	SIGMOD	0.00021282642
318	DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries!	2020	VLDB	0.00021167555
406	Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation	2020	VLDB	0.00019045544
430	ALEX: An Updatable Adaptive Learned Index	2020	SIGMOD	0.00018409112
461	An End-to-End Learning-based Cost Estimator	2020	VLDB	0.00017829982
512	NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables	2021	VLDB	0.00017050173
560	Plan-Structured Deep Neural Network Models for Query Performance Prediction	2019	VLDB	0.00016403151
751	Automatic Physical Database Tuning: A Relaxation-based Approach	2005	SIGMOD	0.0001425375
779	FITing-Tree: A Data-aware Index Structure	2019	SIGMOD	0.00014030069
1,191	Tsunami: A Learned Multi-dimensional Index for Correlated Data and Skewed Workloads	2021	VLDB	0.00011590153
1,883	Automated Partitioning Design in Parallel Database Systems	2011	SIGMOD	9.4391795e-05
2,478	Learning a Partitioning Advisor for Cloud Databases	2020	SIGMOD	8.4079121e-05
7,315	Model-Free Control for Distributed Stream Data Processing using Deep Reinforcement Learning	2018	VLDB	5.554799e-05
10,217	DBMS Fitting: Why should we learn what we already know?	2020	CIDR	5.0582281e-05

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