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: 0.00014062388
Overall Rank: 775 | 94.81%
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	0.00023973185
309	An End-to-End Automatic Cloud Database Tuning System Using Deep Reinforcement Learning	2019	SIGMOD	0.0002143249
313	Tuning Database Configuration Parameters with iTuned	2009	VLDB	0.00021288111
411	QTune: A Query-Aware Database Tuning System with Deep Reinforcement Learning	2019	VLDB	0.0001874043
583	Automatic Performance Diagnosis and Tuning in Oracle	2005	CIDR	0.00015964021
830	Automatic Virtual Machine Configuration for Database Workloads	2008	SIGMOD	0.00013571967
1,282	AI Meets AI: Leveraging Query Executions to Improve Index Recommendations	2019	SIGMOD	0.00011197535
1,670	BHUNT: Automatic Discovery of Fuzzy Algebraic Constraints in Relational Data	2003	VLDB	9.9124313e-05
1,700	Black or White? How to Develop an AutoTuner for Memory-based Analytics	2020	SIGMOD	9.8224761e-05
2,305	GORDIAN: Efficient and Scalable Discovery of Composite Keys	2006	VLDB	8.6550507e-05
2,779	Facilitating Database Tuning with Hyper-Parameter Optimization: A Comprehensive Experimental Evaluation	2022	VLDB	8.0085666e-05
3,575	Make Your Database System Dream of Electric Sheep: Towards Self-Driving Operation	2021	VLDB	7.1769215e-05
3,959	MB2: Decomposed Behavior Modeling for Self-Driving Database Management Systems	2021	SIGMOD	6.8804723e-05
4,101	Towards Dynamic and Safe Configuration Tuning for Cloud Databases	2022	SIGMOD	6.7930727e-05
4,916	A Characterization of the Sensitivity of Query Optimization to Storage Access Cost Parameters	2003	SIGMOD	6.3450917e-05
5,304	An Efficient Transfer Learning Based Configuration Adviser for Database Tuning	2024	VLDB	6.1758143e-05
6,768	Multi-Tenant Cloud Data Services: State-of-the-Art, Challenges and Opportunities	2022	SIGMOD	5.6693759e-05
10,324	Why Database Manuals Are Not Enough: Efficient and Reliable Configuration Tuning for DBMSs via Code-Driven LLM Agents	2026	VLDB	5.0241309e-05
12,697	No Bits Left Behind	2011	CIDR	4.9605343e-05
12,870	Declarative Management in Microsoft SQL Server	2009	VLDB	4.9605343e-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
89	Automated Selection of Materialized Views and Indexes for SQL Databases	2000	VLDB	0.00035265687
98	LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer	2001	VLDB	0.00034050614
194	Data Placement In Bubba	1988	SIGMOD	0.00025627096
207	The LRU-K Page Replacement Algorithm For Database Disk Buffering	1993	SIGMOD	0.00024963419
243	Automating Physical Database Design in a Parallel Database	2002	SIGMOD	0.00023296011
604	Rethinking Database System Architecture: Towards a Self-tuning RISC-style Database System	2000	VLDB	0.00015642703
1,550	Data Warehouse Configuration	1997	VLDB	0.00010257652
1,693	Global Optimization of Histograms	2001	SIGMOD	9.8377504e-05
1,824	Memory Management during Run Generation in External Sorting	1998	SIGMOD	9.545532e-05
2,420	Towards Automated Performance Tuning For Complex Workloads	1994	VLDB	8.4802011e-05
2,423	Goal-Oriented Buffer Management Revisited*	1996	SIGMOD	8.4781834e-05
3,236	Partially Preemptible Hash Joins	1993	SIGMOD	7.4849664e-05
3,356	Database Tuning: principles, experiments, and troubleshooting techniques	2002	SIGMOD	7.3653809e-05
3,449	Load Control for Locking: The 'Half-and-Half' Approach	1990	PODS	7.2743851e-05
3,518	Towards Self-Tuning Data Placement in Parallel Database Systems	2000	SIGMOD	7.2204376e-05
4,275	Adaptive Load Control in Transaction Processing Systems	1991	VLDB	6.6754317e-05
5,581	Dynamic File Allocation in Disk Arrays	1991	SIGMOD	6.0598441e-05
5,940	Performance Evaluation of an Adaptive and Robust Load Control Method for the Avoidance of Data-Contention Thrashing	1992	VLDB	5.921908e-05
6,560	Workflow Management with Service Quality Guarantees	2002	SIGMOD	5.7288882e-05
8,093	Fast-Start: Quick Fault Recovery in Oracle	2001	SIGMOD	5.3741339e-05

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1	11,858	Towards Auto-Generated Data Systems	2023	VLDB
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