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
10,336 An Elephant Under The Microscope: Analyzing The Interaction Of Optimizer Components In PostgreSQL 2025 SIGMOD 5.0200193e-05
10,356 I Can't Believe It's Not Yannakakis: Pragmatic Bitmap Filters in Microsoft SQL Server 2026 CIDR 4.9793485e-05
10,359 Leveraging Query Optimizers to Verify the Soundness of LLM-based Query Rewrites for Real-World Workloads, and More! 2026 CIDR 4.9793485e-05
10,365 Size Bound-Adorned Datalog 2026 PODS 4.9793485e-05
10,401 A Backend-Agnostic Compiler for Approximate Query Processing with Probabilistic Tensor Algebra 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,406 AgenticScholar: Agentic Data Management with Pipeline Orchestration for Scholarly Corpora 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,412 Are Learned DBMS Components Robust to Workload Drift?: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,434 Detecting Join Bugs in Database Engines via Join Implication Reasoning 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,448 EncoderForge: Generating Efficient SQL for Encoders in Machine Learning Inference Pipelines 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,452 Factorized and Vectorized Execution: Optimizing Analytical and Semantic Queries over Relations 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,484 NeurBench: A Benchmark Suite for Learned Database Components with Drift Modeling: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,513 Towards Selecting Informative Alternative Relational Query Plans for Database Education 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,532 Rainbow: Risk-aware Index Benefit Estimation Facing Out Of Distribution Workloads 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,534 SieveSketch: A Fine-grained and Adaptive Sketch Framework for Accurate Frequency Estimation 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,544 Approximate Query Processing under Updates 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,580 MCTuner: Spatial Decomposition-Enhanced Database Tuning via LLM-Guided Exploration 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,590 Query Optimization for Database-Returning Queries 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,596 SEFRQO: A Self-Evolving Fine-Tuned RAG-Based Query Optimizer 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,604 Understanding and Detecting Query Performance Regression in Practical Index Tuning: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,633 Divo: Learning a Stable and Effective Query Optimizer with a Diverse Workload 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,653 InferF: Declarative Factorization of AI/ML Inferences over Joins 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,679 Reqo: A Comprehensive Learning-Based Cost Model for Robust and Explainable Query Optimization 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,693 Practical Parameterized Query Optimization via Efficient Plan Reuse and List-wise Ranking 2026 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
10,698 LIO: A lightweight and interpretable query optimizer based on an evolutionary forest 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,700 Sample-based Distinct Cardinality Estimation for Multiple Attributes in Multi-Dataset Queries 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,713 Robust Predicate Transfer with Dynamic Execution 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,741 OBELISK: Efficient Offline Query Planning with Bayesian Optimization-Informed Language Model Reasoning 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,747 LakeHelm: Zero-Shot Lakehouse Advisor for Joint Engine-Format Selection and Configuration 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,751 Toward Drift-Aware Database Benchmarking 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,802 BaCon: Efficient Batch Processing of Counting Queries 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,823 Revisiting Filtered ANN Benchmarks: A Hardness-Controlled Benchmark Generator for Realistic Evaluation 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,832 ReSequel: Robust LLM-assisted Query Rewriting and Optimization using Templatization and Sampling 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,842 The Data World Is Not Flat: Efficient Factorized Execution for Relational Systems 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,883 QDBO: A Real-time Quantum-augmented Database System Optimizer 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,884 FlowLog: Efficient and Extensible Datalog via Incrementality 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,885 Storing and Indexing Multiple Tables by Interesting Orderings: For Efficient Joins, Groupings, and Updates in Relational Databases 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,896 Benchmarking the Full Pipeline of Materialized-View-Based Query Rewriting 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,911 Hermes at Scale: Powering Distributed Queries with a Unified Memory Fabric 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,918 Evaluating the Practical Effectiveness of LLM-Driven Index Tuning on Microsoft SQL Server 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,924 TATA: An Efficient Framework for Task Transfer in Query Plan Representation 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,928 Real-time SQL Plan Management in Oracle 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,938 Towards Industrial-Scale Parametric Query Optimization 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,941 Ultron: History-Based Query Optimization at Databricks 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,955 How Out-of-Bounds Are Your Cardinality Estimates? 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,973 Demonstrating GenDB: Instance-Optimized and Customized Query Processing Code Generation via LLM Agents 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
10,982 A Portable Middleware for Plan-Based Adaptive Query Processing 2026 VLDB 4.9793485e-05
11,148 Demo of LearnedWMP: Workload Memory Prediction Using Deep Query Template Representations 2025 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
11,168 UDFBench: A Tool for Benchmarking UDF Queries on SQL Engines 2025 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
11,170 Virtualizing Cloud Data Infrastructures with BRAD 2025 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
11,175 AJOSC: Adaptive Join Order Selection for Continuous Queries 2025 SIGMOD 4.9793485e-05
Previous Page 6 / 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