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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
9,014 Resource-Adaptive Query Execution with Paged Memory Management 2025 CIDR 5.2235585e-05
9,031 ByteCard: Enhancing ByteDance’s Data Warehouse with Learned Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 5.219814e-05
9,079 Optimizing Disjunctive Queries with Tagged Execution 2024 SIGMOD 5.2106452e-05
9,141 Presto’s History-based Query Optimizer 2024 VLDB 5.2078543e-05
9,143 Check Out the Big Brain on BRAD: Simplifying Cloud Data Processing with Learned Automated Data Meshes 2023 VLDB 5.2074327e-05
9,176 One Seed, Two Birds: A Unified Learned Structure for Exact and Approximate Counting 2024 SIGMOD 5.200391e-05
9,213 FEBench: A Benchmark for Real-Time Relational Data Feature Extraction 2023 VLDB 5.1926696e-05
9,236 BASE: Bridging the Gap between Cost and Latency for Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 5.1882723e-05
9,243 CloudGlide: Deconstructing the Landscape of Cloud-Based Analytics 2025 VLDB 5.1864799e-05
9,244 DPconv: Super-Polynomially Faster Join Ordering 2024 SIGMOD 5.1864409e-05
9,253 Finding Missed Optimizations in DBMSs through Unbalanced Short-Circuit Query Construction 2026 SIGMOD 5.1860131e-05
9,361 Databases in the Era of Memory-Centric Computing 2025 CIDR 5.174177e-05
9,396 Extending SQL to Return a Subdatabase 2025 SIGMOD 5.1672232e-05
9,397 Exploring Exploratory Querying 2025 VLDB 5.1672232e-05
9,407 Efficient and Effective Cardinality Estimation for Skyline Family 2023 SIGMOD 5.1672232e-05
9,476 Saving Money for Analytical Workloads in the Cloud 2024 VLDB 5.157794e-05
9,494 SQLBarber: A System Leveraging Large Language Models to Generate Customized and Realistic SQL Workloads 2026 SIGMOD 5.1541298e-05
9,518 LpBound in Action: Cardinality Estimation with One-Sided Guarantees 2025 SIGMOD 5.151324e-05
9,583 Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement 2025 SIGMOD 5.140977e-05
9,599 Saving Private Hash Join 2025 VLDB 5.1376962e-05
9,655 Db2une: Tuning Under Pressure via Deep Learning 2024 VLDB 5.1307018e-05
9,662 Low Rank Learning for Offline Query Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 5.1283524e-05
9,667 Small Selectivities Matter: Lifting the Burden of Empty Samples 2021 SIGMOD 5.1278365e-05
9,669 Poisson Sampling over Acyclic Joins 2026 SIGMOD 5.1275185e-05
9,676 CEDA: Learned Cardinality Estimation with Domain Adaptation 2023 VLDB 5.1262369e-05
9,681 Are Joins over LSM-trees Ready? Take RocksDB as an Example 2025 VLDB 5.1258854e-05
9,729 The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries 2025 VLDB 5.1202393e-05
9,753 A Practical Theory of Generalization in Selectivity Learning 2025 VLDB 5.1159926e-05
9,754 Leveraging Query Optimizers to Verify the Soundness of LLM-based Query Rewrites for Real-World Workloads, and More! 2026 CIDR 5.115551e-05
9,756 APQO: An Adaptive Framework for Parametric Query Optimization 2026 SIGMOD 5.115551e-05
9,767 PAR2QO: Parametric Penalty-Aware Robust Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.115551e-05
9,810 Color: A Framework for Applying Graph Coloring to Subgraph Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 5.112328e-05
9,829 Wii: Dynamic Budget Reallocation In Index Tuning 2024 SIGMOD 5.1066866e-05
9,837 NeuSO: Neural Optimizer for Subgraph Queries 2026 SIGMOD 5.1064323e-05
9,946 AgentTune: An Agent-Based Large Language Model Framework for Database Knob Tuning 2026 SIGMOD 5.0910746e-05
9,952 Cardinality Estimation for Similarity Search on High-Dimensional Data Objects: The Impact of Reference Objects 2025 VLDB 5.0910746e-05
9,995 Graph Transformers for Query Plan Representation: Potentials and Challenges 2025 VLDB 5.0845476e-05
10,014 Selectivity Estimation for Queries Containing Predicates over Set-Valued Attributes 2023 SIGMOD 5.0838565e-05
10,039 Selective Late Materialization in Modern Analytical Databases 2025 VLDB 5.0786422e-05
10,070 Cardinality Estimation of LIKE Predicate Queries using Deep Learning 2025 SIGMOD 5.0733319e-05
10,094 SPACE: Cardinality Estimation for Path Queries Using Cardinality-Aware Sequence-based Learning 2025 SIGMOD 5.068372e-05
10,143 Still Asking: How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2025 VLDB 5.0597449e-05
10,181 How to Optimize SQL Queries? A Comparison Between Split, Holistic, and Hybrid Approaches 2025 VLDB 5.0550978e-05
10,220 Efficient Algorithms for Cardinality Estimation and Conjunctive Query Evaluation With Simple Degree Constraints 2025 PODS 5.0460607e-05
10,221 Path-centric Cardinality Estimation for Subgraph Matching 2025 VLDB 5.0460607e-05
10,249 Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections 2022 VLDB 5.0412674e-05
10,257 PRICE: A Pretrained Model for Cross-Database Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 5.039379e-05
10,258 DBMS Fitting: Why should we learn what we already know? 2020 CIDR 5.0391159e-05
10,278 Redbench: Workload Synthesis From Cloud Traces 2026 VLDB 5.0334833e-05
10,323 This is Going to Sound Crazy, But What If We Used Large Language Models to Boost Automatic Database Tuning Algorithms By Leveraging Prior History? We Will Find Better Configurations More Quickly Than Retraining From Scratch! 2026 SIGMOD 5.0241309e-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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