A Transformation-Based Approach to Optimizing Loops in Database Programming Languages

Summary: Proposes a compile-time, transformation-based framework to optimize nested iterators in database languages (O2, E, O++), akin to join reordering. An EXODUS-generated optimizer pass is integrated into Bell Labs' O++ compiler, with experiments showing substantial gains. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h2dac24cd2fc011d5
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 1992
Pagerank: 8.3124291e-05
Overall Rank: 2,549 | 82.87%
DOI: 10.1145/130283.130301

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Daniel F. Lieuwen (University of Wisconsin)
2. David J. DeWitt (University of Wisconsin)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{lieuwen_sigmod92,
        title = {{A Transformation-Based Approach to Optimizing Loops in Database Programming Languages}},
        author = {Lieuwen, Daniel F. and DeWitt, David J.},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '92},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/130283.130301},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/130283.130301},
        year = {1992}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 10 of 10 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,274	Rewriting Procedures for Batched Bindings	2008	VLDB	0.00011247334
1,968	A Call to Order	1993	PODS	9.2967501e-05
2,983	Optimizing Boolean Expressions in Object Bases	1992	VLDB	7.7839431e-05
4,061	Aggify: Lifting the Curse of Cursor Loops using Custom Aggregates	2020	SIGMOD	6.824809e-05
4,677	Efficient Evaluation of XQuery over Streaming Data	2005	VLDB	6.4733736e-05
4,962	Avalanche-Safe LINQ Compilation	2010	VLDB	6.3385889e-05
6,088	Iterative Query Processing based on Unified Optimization Techniques	2019	SIGMOD	5.8908778e-05
6,840	Towards Unified Ad-hoc Data Processing	2014	SIGMOD	5.6669233e-05
13,312	Tutorial: Languages for Collection Types	1994	PODS	4.9793485e-05
13,330	Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages	1994	VLDB	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 9 of 9 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
7	Implementation Techniques For Main Memory Database Systems	1984	SIGMOD	0.00081992507
97	Of Nests and Trees: A Unified Approach to Processing Queries That Contain Nested Subqueries, Aggregates, and Quantifiers	1987	VLDB	0.00034124569
132	Optimization of Nested SQL Queries Revisited	1987	SIGMOD	0.00030241193
196	Grammar-like Functional Rules for Representing Query Optimization Alternatives	1988	SIGMOD	0.00025626873
263	Some High-level Language Constructs for Data of Type Relation	1977	SIGMOD	0.00022811354
1,732	The O2 Database Programming Language	1989	VLDB	9.7621488e-05
2,107	A Performance Evaluation of Pointer-Based Joins	1990	SIGMOD	9.03108e-05
2,864	Optimization and Dataflow Algorithms for Nested Tree Queries	1989	VLDB	7.9273714e-05
8,067	Analysis Of The Context Dependency Of Codasyl Find-Statements With Application To Database Program Conversion	1985	SIGMOD	5.3949699e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	12,846	XML Query Optimization in the Presence of Side Effects	2008	SIGMOD
2	8,673	Adaptive Code Generation for Data-Intensive Analytics	2021	VLDB
3	4,415	Estimating Compilation Time of a Query Optimizer	2003	SIGMOD
4	2,993	Extracting Equivalent SQL from Imperative Code in Database Applications	2016	SIGMOD
5	1,057	Query Graphs, Implementing Trees, and Freely-Reorderable Outerjoins	1990	SIGMOD
6	13,330	Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages	1994	VLDB
7	143	Optimization of Nonrecursive Queries	1986	VLDB
8	7,261	Rule-Based Translation of Relational Queries into Iterative Programs	1986	SIGMOD
9	4,653	Translating Aggregate Queries into Iterative Programs	1986	VLDB
10	9,312	From Nested-Loop to Join Queries in OODB	1994	VLDB