DBScholar

Back to papers

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
0.00061066921
Overall Rank
15 | 99.91%
DOI
10.14778/2850583.2850594

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 330 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
9,145 One Seed, Two Birds: A Unified Learned Structure for Exact and Approximate Counting 2024 SIGMOD 5.220115e-05
9,179 FEBench: A Benchmark for Real-Time Relational Data Feature Extraction 2023 VLDB 5.2121898e-05
9,211 DPconv: Super-Polynomially Faster Join Ordering 2024 SIGMOD 5.206112e-05
9,219 Finding Missed Optimizations in DBMSs through Unbalanced Short-Circuit Query Construction 2026 SIGMOD 5.2056825e-05
9,276 BASE: Bridging the Gap between Cost and Latency for Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 5.204289e-05
9,300 GenJoin: Conditional Generative Plan-to-Plan Query Optimizer that Learns from Subplan Hints 2026 SIGMOD 5.1987909e-05
9,360 Extending SQL to Return a Subdatabase 2025 SIGMOD 5.1868213e-05
9,362 Exploring Exploratory Querying 2025 VLDB 5.1868213e-05
9,372 Efficient and Effective Cardinality Estimation for Skyline Family 2023 SIGMOD 5.1868213e-05
9,454 SQLBarber: A System Leveraging Large Language Models to Generate Customized and Realistic SQL Workloads 2026 SIGMOD 5.1736782e-05
9,478 LpBound in Action: Cardinality Estimation with One-Sided Guarantees 2025 SIGMOD 5.1708619e-05
9,546 Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement 2025 SIGMOD 5.1604755e-05
9,566 Saving Private Hash Join 2025 VLDB 5.1571823e-05
9,610 LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.1526493e-05
9,620 Db2une: Tuning Under Pressure via Deep Learning 2024 VLDB 5.1501614e-05
9,632 Small Selectivities Matter: Lifting the Burden of Empty Samples 2021 SIGMOD 5.1472849e-05
9,634 Poisson Sampling over Acyclic Joins 2026 SIGMOD 5.146966e-05
9,641 CEDA: Learned Cardinality Estimation with Domain Adaptation 2023 VLDB 5.1456789e-05
9,646 Are Joins over LSM-trees Ready? Take RocksDB as an Example 2025 VLDB 5.1453267e-05
9,670 Low Rank Learning for Offline Query Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 5.1452097e-05
9,694 The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries 2025 VLDB 5.1396592e-05
9,718 A Practical Theory of Generalization in Selectivity Learning 2025 VLDB 5.1353964e-05
9,720 APQO: An Adaptive Framework for Parametric Query Optimization 2026 SIGMOD 5.1349531e-05
9,730 PAR2QO: Parametric Penalty-Aware Robust Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.1349531e-05
9,790 Wii: Dynamic Budget Reallocation In Index Tuning 2024 SIGMOD 5.1260323e-05
9,797 NeuSO: Neural Optimizer for Subgraph Queries 2026 SIGMOD 5.1257999e-05
9,904 AgentTune: An Agent-Based Large Language Model Framework for Database Knob Tuning 2026 SIGMOD 5.1103839e-05
9,910 Cardinality Estimation for Similarity Search on High-Dimensional Data Objects: The Impact of Reference Objects 2025 VLDB 5.1103839e-05
9,954 Conformal Prediction for Verifiable Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.1038322e-05
9,956 Graph Transformers for Query Plan Representation: Potentials and Challenges 2025 VLDB 5.1038322e-05
9,976 Selectivity Estimation for Queries Containing Predicates over Set-Valued Attributes 2023 SIGMOD 5.1031384e-05
9,999 Selective Late Materialization in Modern Analytical Databases 2025 VLDB 5.0979044e-05
10,027 Cardinality Estimation of LIKE Predicate Queries using Deep Learning 2025 SIGMOD 5.0925739e-05
10,057 SPACE: Cardinality Estimation for Path Queries Using Cardinality-Aware Sequence-based Learning 2025 SIGMOD 5.0875952e-05
10,074 Databases in the Era of Memory-Centric Computing 2025 CIDR 5.0855548e-05
10,103 Still Asking: How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2025 VLDB 5.0789354e-05
10,140 How to Optimize SQL Queries? A Comparison Between Split, Holistic, and Hybrid Approaches 2025 VLDB 5.0742707e-05
10,148 Improving DBMS Scheduling Decisions with Accurate Performance Prediction on Concurrent Queries 2025 VLDB 5.0715586e-05
10,182 Efficient Algorithms for Cardinality Estimation and Conjunctive Query Evaluation With Simple Degree Constraints 2025 PODS 5.0651993e-05
10,184 Path-centric Cardinality Estimation for Subgraph Matching 2025 VLDB 5.0651993e-05
10,187 Saving Money for Analytical Workloads in the Cloud 2024 VLDB 5.0651993e-05
10,205 Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections 2022 VLDB 5.0603873e-05
10,215 Color: A Framework for Applying Graph Coloring to Subgraph Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 5.0584922e-05
10,216 PRICE: A Pretrained Model for Cross-Database Cardinality Estimation 2025 VLDB 5.0584922e-05
10,217 DBMS Fitting: Why should we learn what we already know? 2020 CIDR 5.0582281e-05
10,242 Redbench: Workload Synthesis From Cloud Traces 2026 VLDB 5.0525742e-05
10,290 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 5.0431863e-05
10,294 Data-Agnostic Cardinality Learning from Imperfect Workloads 2025 VLDB 5.0431863e-05
10,304 Data Chunk Compaction in Vectorized Execution 2025 SIGMOD 5.0400722e-05
10,322 SSCard: Substring Cardinality Estimation using Suffix Tree-Guided Learned FM-Index 2026 SIGMOD 5.0346745e-05
Previous Page 5 / 7 Next

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 0.0023947656
91 On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results 1991 SIGMOD 0.0003475226
98 LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer 2001 VLDB 0.00034106982
103 Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption 1997 VLDB 0.00033894985
160 CORDS: Automatic Discovery of Correlations and Soft Functional Dependencies 2004 SIGMOD 0.00027837289
255 The History of Histograms (abridged) 2003 VLDB 0.00022981861
386 Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors 2009 VLDB 0.00019444411
397 R* Optimizer Validation and Performance Evaluation for Local Queries 1986 SIGMOD 0.00019157058
569 Towards a Robust Query Optimizer: A Principled and Practical Approach 2005 SIGMOD 0.00016245271
884 Dynamic Programming Strikes Back 2008 SIGMOD 0.00013267935
1,060 Lightweight Graphical Models for Selectivity Estimation Without Independence Assumptions 2011 VLDB 0.00012224575
1,606 The Picasso Database Query Optimizer Visualizer 2010 VLDB 0.00010089789
1,891 CS2: A New Database Synopsis for Query Estimation 2013 SIGMOD 9.4184294e-05
1,929 Consistently Estimating the Selectivity of Conjuncts of Predicates 2005 VLDB 9.3546057e-05
1,987 Plan Bouquets: Query Processing without Selectivity Estimation 2014 SIGMOD 9.250242e-05
2,245 Cache-Efficient Aggregation: Hashing Is Sorting 2015 SIGMOD 8.7649358e-05
2,251 Counter Strike: Generic Top-Down Join Enumeration for Hypergraphs 2013 VLDB 8.7511987e-05
2,530 Adaptive and Big Data Scale Parallel Execution in Oracle 2013 VLDB 8.3391175e-05
2,891 Query Optimizers: Time to Rethink the Contract? 2009 SIGMOD 7.9021718e-05
3,367 Exact Cardinality Query Optimization for Optimizer Testing 2009 VLDB 7.3719456e-05
3,797 Query Simplification: Graceful Degradation for Join-Order Optimization 2009 SIGMOD 7.0163619e-05
4,052 Of Snowstorms and Bushy Trees 2014 VLDB 6.8283077e-05
6,800 ROX: Run-time Optimization of XQueries 2009 SIGMOD 5.6792071e-05
Previous Page 1 / 1 Next

Semantically Similar Papers