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How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?

Summary: Introduces the Join Order Benchmark (JOB) to test optimizer components on real-world, multi-join workloads. Cardinality estimators are error-prone; cost models matter less than estimates; exhaustive dynamic programming improves plan quality over heuristics under poor cardinality. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID
h476371500a44338b
Venue
VLDB
Year
2016
Pagerank
0.00061463175
Overall Rank
15 | 99.91%
DOI
10.14778/2850583.2850594
PDF
Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@article{leis_vldb16,
        title = {{How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?}},
        author = {Leis, Viktor and Gubichev, Andrey and Mirchev, Atanas and Boncz, Peter and Kemper, Alfons and Neumann, Thomas},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '16},
        volume = {9},
        number = {3},
        pages = {204--215},
        doi = {10.14778/2850583.2850594},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/2850583.2850594},
        year = {2016}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 333 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
2,829 G-CARE: A Framework for Performance Benchmarking of Cardinality Estimation Techniques for Subgraph Matching 2020 SIGMOD 7.9469964e-05
2,852 FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries 2023 SIGMOD 7.9201312e-05
2,987 Accurate Summary-based Cardinality Estimation Through the Lens of Cardinality Estimation Graphs 2022 VLDB 7.767043e-05
3,060 A Unified Deep Model of Learning from both Data and Queries for Cardinality Estimation 2021 SIGMOD 7.6828463e-05
3,062 Towards a Hands-Free Query Optimizer through Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 7.6809918e-05
3,081 Pushing Data-Induced Predicates Through Joins in Big-Data Clusters 2020 VLDB 7.6515625e-05
3,105 A Learned Sketch for Subgraph Counting 2021 SIGMOD 7.6278115e-05
3,136 Every Row Counts: Combining Sketches and Sampling for Accurate Group-By Result Estimates 2019 CIDR 7.5902303e-05
3,158 GenRewrite: Query Rewriting via Large Language Models 2026 SIGMOD 7.5676704e-05
3,205 A Statistical Perspective on Discovering Functional Dependencies in Noisy Data 2020 SIGMOD 7.5221127e-05
3,215 Columnar Storage and List-based Processing for Graph Database Management Systems 2021 VLDB 7.5117201e-05
3,269 Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads 2023 VLDB 7.463682e-05
3,282 Estimating Cardinalities with Deep Sketches 2019 SIGMOD 7.4491295e-05
3,297 Performance-Optimal Filtering: Bloom Overtakes Cuckoo at High Throughput 2019 VLDB 7.4280812e-05
3,328 Auto-WLM: Machine Learning Enhanced Workload Management in Amazon Redshift 2023 SIGMOD 7.4094448e-05
3,416 RHEEM: Enabling Cross-Platform Data Processing - May The Big Data Be With You! - 2018 VLDB 7.3046808e-05
3,481 LOGER: A Learned Optimizer towards Generating Efficient and Robust Query Execution Plans 2023 VLDB 7.2463722e-05
3,550 Computation Reuse in Analytics Job Service at Microsoft 2018 SIGMOD 7.1895215e-05
3,555 Astrid: Accurate Selectivity Estimation for String Predicates using Deep Learning 2021 VLDB 7.1877332e-05
3,602 Looking Ahead Makes Query Plans Robust: Making the Initial Case with In-Memory Star Schema Data Warehouse Workloads 2017 VLDB 7.1572829e-05
3,655 UDO: Universal Database Optimization using Reinforcement Learning 2021 VLDB 7.1137504e-05
3,740 FACE: A Normalizing Flow based Cardinality Estimator 2022 VLDB 7.0398782e-05
3,783 HTAP Databases: What is New and What is Next 2022 SIGMOD 7.0016354e-05
3,909 SQLStorm: Taking Database Benchmarking into the LLM Era 2025 VLDB 6.9127576e-05
3,927 JSON Tiles: Fast Analytics on Semi-Structured Data 2021 SIGMOD 6.9025015e-05
3,951 Deploying a Steered Query Optimizer in Production at Microsoft 2022 SIGMOD 6.8884038e-05
3,959 MB2: Decomposed Behavior Modeling for Self-Driving Database Management Systems 2021 SIGMOD 6.8804723e-05
3,995 Simplicity Done Right for Join Ordering 2021 CIDR 6.8530469e-05
4,011 Guaranteeing the O~(AGM/OUT) Runtime for Uniform Sampling and Size Estimation over Joins 2023 PODS 6.842581e-05
4,022 Automated Generation of Materialized Views in Oracle 2020 VLDB 6.8345671e-05
4,063 The Art of Balance: A RateupDB Experience of Building a CPU/GPU Hybrid Database Product 2021 VLDB 6.812902e-05
4,101 Towards Dynamic and Safe Configuration Tuning for Cloud Databases 2022 SIGMOD 6.7930727e-05
4,202 Kepler: Robust Learning for Faster Parametric Query Optimization 2023 SIGMOD 6.7258607e-05
4,210 Adaptive Work Placement for Query Processing on Heterogeneous Computing Resources 2017 VLDB 6.7206837e-05
4,247 LEON: A New Framework for ML-Aided Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 6.6920059e-05
4,252 Adaptive Statistics in Oracle 12c 2017 VLDB 6.6894038e-05
4,270 Sample Debiasing in the Themis Open World Database System 2020 SIGMOD 6.6762181e-05
4,396 Predicate Transfer: Efficient Pre-Filtering on Multi-Join Queries 2024 CIDR 6.6072577e-05
4,459 Warper: Efficiently Adapting Learned Cardinality Estimators to Data and Workload Drifts 2022 SIGMOD 6.5757572e-05
4,479 Lightweight and Accurate Cardinality Estimation by Neural Network Gaussian Process 2022 SIGMOD 6.5665703e-05
4,641 How Good are Learned Cost Models, Really? Insights from Query Optimization Tasks 2025 SIGMOD 6.4739208e-05
4,683 AutoSteer: Learned Query Optimization for Any SQL Database 2023 VLDB 6.4545989e-05
4,701 Columnstore and B+ tree – Are Hybrid Physical Designs Important? 2018 SIGMOD 6.44638e-05
4,720 PreQR: Pre-training Representation for SQL Understanding 2022 SIGMOD 6.4353798e-05
4,726 Learned Index Benefits: Machine Learning Based Index Performance Estimation 2022 VLDB 6.4329878e-05
4,773 Cuckoo Index: A Lightweight Secondary Index Structure 2020 VLDB 6.4102054e-05
4,797 LSched: A Workload-Aware Learned Query Scheduler for Analytical Database Systems 2022 SIGMOD 6.3978116e-05
4,817 Permutable Compiled Queries: Dynamically Adapting Compiled Queries without Recompiling 2021 VLDB 6.388743e-05
4,882 LpBound: Pessimistic Cardinality Estimation using ℓp-Norms of Degree Sequences 2025 SIGMOD 6.3565046e-05
4,971 Debunking the Myth of Join Ordering: Toward Robust SQL Analytics 2025 SIGMOD 6.3209003e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 23 of 23 cited papers.

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

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
1 Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System 1979 SIGMOD 0.0023948467
91 On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results 1991 SIGMOD 0.00034691614
98 LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer 2001 VLDB 0.00034050614
103 Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption 1997 VLDB 0.00033847446
160 CORDS: Automatic Discovery of Correlations and Soft Functional Dependencies 2004 SIGMOD 0.00027775994
254 The History of Histograms (abridged) 2003 VLDB 0.00022999992
381 Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors 2009 VLDB 0.00019497061
396 R* Optimizer Validation and Performance Evaluation for Local Queries 1986 SIGMOD 0.00019119719
568 Towards a Robust Query Optimizer: A Principled and Practical Approach 2005 SIGMOD 0.00016221103
881 Dynamic Programming Strikes Back 2008 SIGMOD 0.0001324243
1,061 Lightweight Graphical Models for Selectivity Estimation Without Independence Assumptions 2011 VLDB 0.00012207625
1,604 The Picasso Database Query Optimizer Visualizer 2010 VLDB 0.00010086711
1,896 CS2: A New Database Synopsis for Query Estimation 2013 SIGMOD 9.4010932e-05
1,935 Consistently Estimating the Selectivity of Conjuncts of Predicates 2005 VLDB 9.3407959e-05
1,987 Plan Bouquets: Query Processing without Selectivity Estimation 2014 SIGMOD 9.2323722e-05
2,248 Cache-Efficient Aggregation: Hashing Is Sorting 2015 SIGMOD 8.7484225e-05
2,261 Counter Strike: Generic Top-Down Join Enumeration for Hypergraphs 2013 VLDB 8.7351549e-05
2,527 Adaptive and Big Data Scale Parallel Execution in Oracle 2013 VLDB 8.3243069e-05
2,888 Query Optimizers: Time to Rethink the Contract? 2009 SIGMOD 7.8895201e-05
3,361 Exact Cardinality Query Optimization for Optimizer Testing 2009 VLDB 7.3621595e-05
3,807 Query Simplification: Graceful Degradation for Join-Order Optimization 2009 SIGMOD 6.9902343e-05
4,048 Of Snowstorms and Bushy Trees 2014 VLDB 6.817438e-05
6,816 ROX: Run-time Optimization of XQueries 2009 SIGMOD 5.6593309e-05
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