Self-tuning Database Technology and Information Services: from Wishful Thinking to Viable Engineering

Summary: Reviews a decade of self-tuning database research, arguing that viable autonomy requires feedback-control loops grounded in mathematical models and engineered into system components. Higher-level self-tuning E-services may require simpler, highly componentized architectures with narrow interfaces. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID: h426c37ddba9c5093
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2002
Pagerank: 0.00014025444
Overall Rank: 780 | 94.76%
DOI: 10.1016/B978-155860869-6/50011-1

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Gerhard Weikum (University of Saarland)
2. Axel Moenkeberg (Swiss Re)
3. Christof Hasse (UBS AG)
4. Peter Zabback (Microsoft)

BibTeX Citation

@article{weikum_vldb02,
        title = {{Self-tuning Database Technology and Information Services: from Wishful Thinking to Viable Engineering}},
        author = {Weikum, Gerhard and Moenkeberg, Axel and Hasse, Christof and Zabback, Peter},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '02},
        doi = {10.1016/B978-155860869-6/50011-1},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-155860869-6/50011-1},
        year = {2002}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 20 of 20 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
224	Self-Driving Database Management Systems	2017	CIDR	0.00024013745
314	An End-to-End Automatic Cloud Database Tuning System Using Deep Reinforcement Learning	2019	SIGMOD	0.00021282642
322	Tuning Database Configuration Parameters with iTuned	2009	VLDB	0.00021041865
437	QTune: A Query-Aware Database Tuning System with Deep Reinforcement Learning	2019	VLDB	0.00018315867
598	Automatic Performance Diagnosis and Tuning in Oracle	2005	CIDR	0.00015761263
835	Automatic Virtual Machine Configuration for Database Workloads	2008	SIGMOD	0.00013573201
1,279	AI Meets AI: Leveraging Query Executions to Improve Index Recommendations	2019	SIGMOD	0.00011226878
1,662	BHUNT: Automatic Discovery of Fuzzy Algebraic Constraints in Relational Data	2003	VLDB	9.9465656e-05
1,699	Black or White? How to Develop an AutoTuner for Memory-based Analytics	2020	SIGMOD	9.8445322e-05
2,291	GORDIAN: Efficient and Scalable Discovery of Composite Keys	2006	VLDB	8.6872323e-05
2,772	Facilitating Database Tuning with Hyper-Parameter Optimization: A Comprehensive Experimental Evaluation	2022	VLDB	8.035288e-05
3,590	Make Your Database System Dream of Electric Sheep: Towards Self-Driving Operation	2021	VLDB	7.1865343e-05
3,965	MB2: Decomposed Behavior Modeling for Self-Driving Database Management Systems	2021	SIGMOD	6.8918628e-05
4,079	Towards Dynamic and Safe Configuration Tuning for Cloud Databases	2022	SIGMOD	6.818264e-05
4,893	A Characterization of the Sensitivity of Query Optimization to Storage Access Cost Parameters	2003	SIGMOD	6.3677985e-05
5,286	An Efficient Transfer Learning Based Configuration Adviser for Database Tuning	2024	VLDB	6.1971399e-05
6,753	Multi-Tenant Cloud Data Services: State-of-the-Art, Challenges and Opportunities	2022	SIGMOD	5.6904085e-05
10,291	Why Database Manuals Are Not Enough: Efficient and Reliable Configuration Tuning for DBMSs via Code-Driven LLM Agents	2026	VLDB	5.0431863e-05
12,648	No Bits Left Behind	2011	CIDR	4.9793485e-05
12,821	Declarative Management in Microsoft SQL Server	2009	VLDB	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 20 of 20 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
88	Automated Selection of Materialized Views and Indexes for SQL Databases	2000	VLDB	0.00035351639
98	LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer	2001	VLDB	0.00034106982
191	Data Placement In Bubba	1988	SIGMOD	0.00025700375
212	The LRU-K Page Replacement Algorithm For Database Disk Buffering	1993	SIGMOD	0.00024767296
243	Automating Physical Database Design in a Parallel Database	2002	SIGMOD	0.00023358891
604	Rethinking Database System Architecture: Towards a Self-tuning RISC-style Database System	2000	VLDB	0.0001566686
1,547	Data Warehouse Configuration	1997	VLDB	0.00010292395
1,687	Global Optimization of Histograms	2001	SIGMOD	9.8655879e-05
1,823	Memory Management during Run Generation in External Sorting	1998	SIGMOD	9.5606648e-05
2,425	Towards Automated Performance Tuning For Complex Workloads	1994	VLDB	8.4854028e-05
2,437	Goal-Oriented Buffer Management Revisited*	1996	SIGMOD	8.4668531e-05
3,248	Partially Preemptible Hash Joins	1993	SIGMOD	7.4939881e-05
3,352	Database Tuning: principles, experiments, and troubleshooting techniques	2002	SIGMOD	7.3904295e-05
3,443	Load Control for Locking: The 'Half-and-Half' Approach	1990	PODS	7.2968692e-05
3,511	Towards Self-Tuning Data Placement in Parallel Database Systems	2000	SIGMOD	7.244841e-05
4,263	Adaptive Load Control in Transaction Processing Systems	1991	VLDB	6.6979679e-05
5,563	Dynamic File Allocation in Disk Arrays	1991	SIGMOD	6.0828033e-05
5,932	Performance Evaluation of an Adaptive and Robust Load Control Method for the Avoidance of Data-Contention Thrashing	1992	VLDB	5.9423607e-05
6,549	Workflow Management with Service Quality Guarantees	2002	SIGMOD	5.7503218e-05
8,141	Fast-Start: Quick Fault Recovery in Oracle	2001	SIGMOD	5.3918615e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	11,808	Towards Auto-Generated Data Systems	2023	VLDB
2	6,823	Self-Managing Technology in Database Management Systems	2004	VLDB
3	2,772	Facilitating Database Tuning with Hyper-Parameter Optimization: A Comprehensive Experimental Evaluation	2022	VLDB
4	751	Automatic Physical Database Tuning: A Relaxation-based Approach	2005	SIGMOD
5	224	Self-Driving Database Management Systems	2017	CIDR
6	6,080	From Auto-tuning One Size Fits All to Self-designed and Learned Data-intensive Systems	2019	SIGMOD
7	10,231	Foundations of Automated Database Tuning	2005	SIGMOD
8	14,476	Ubiquitous, Self-tuning, Scalable Servers	1998	SIGMOD
9	6,251	Foundations of Automated Database Tuning	2006	VLDB
10	604	Rethinking Database System Architecture: Towards a Self-tuning RISC-style Database System	2000	VLDB