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: 8.2817782e-05
Overall Rank: 2,555 | 82.88%
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
1,276	Rewriting Procedures for Batched Bindings	2008	VLDB	0.00011210489
1,978	A Call to Order	1993	PODS	9.2625526e-05
2,994	Optimizing Boolean Expressions in Object Bases	1992	VLDB	7.756091e-05
4,078	Aggify: Lifting the Curse of Cursor Loops using Custom Aggregates	2020	SIGMOD	6.8028789e-05
4,694	Efficient Evaluation of XQuery over Streaming Data	2005	VLDB	6.4490159e-05
4,985	Avalanche-Safe LINQ Compilation	2010	VLDB	6.3150185e-05
6,104	Iterative Query Processing based on Unified Optimization Techniques	2019	SIGMOD	5.8688901e-05
6,862	Towards Unified Ad-hoc Data Processing	2014	SIGMOD	5.6458401e-05
13,359	Tutorial: Languages for Collection Types	1994	PODS	4.9605343e-05
13,377	Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages	1994	VLDB	4.9605343e-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	0.00081781676
99	Of Nests and Trees: A Unified Approach to Processing Queries That Contain Nested Subqueries, Aggregates, and Quantifiers	1987	VLDB	0.00034024478
133	Optimization of Nested SQL Queries Revisited	1987	SIGMOD	0.0003015194
197	Grammar-like Functional Rules for Representing Query Optimization Alternatives	1988	SIGMOD	0.00025558952
265	Some High-level Language Constructs for Data of Type Relation	1977	SIGMOD	0.00022728909
1,743	The O2 Database Programming Language	1989	VLDB	9.7256595e-05
2,121	A Performance Evaluation of Pointer-Based Joins	1990	SIGMOD	8.9972659e-05
2,874	Optimization and Dataflow Algorithms for Nested Tree Queries	1989	VLDB	7.898744e-05
8,089	Analysis Of The Context Dependency Of Codasyl Find-Statements With Application To Database Program Conversion	1985	SIGMOD	5.3746232e-05

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