SkinnerDB: Regret-Bounded Query Evaluation via Reinforcement Learning

Summary: SkinnerDB uses RL-based adaptive query processing to bound regret by cycling join orders. It layers on DBMSs or runs standalone, using timeouts and an iterative scheme to explore orders with a compact representation for fast switches. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h585e62310c21bd36
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2018
Pagerank: 9.5987229e-05
Overall Rank: 1,803 | 87.92%
DOI: 10.14778/3229863.3236263
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Immanuel Trummer (Cornell University)
2. Samuel Moseley (Cornell University)
3. Deepak Maram (Cornell University)
4. Saehan Jo (Cornell University)
5. Joseph Antonakakis (Cornell University)

BibTeX Citation

@article{trummer_vldb18,
        title = {{SkinnerDB: Regret-Bounded Query Evaluation via Reinforcement Learning}},
        author = {Trummer, Immanuel and Moseley, Samuel and Maram, Deepak and Jo, Saehan and Antonakakis, Joseph},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '18},
        volume = {11},
        number = {12},
        pages = {2074--2077},
        doi = {10.14778/3229863.3236263},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3229863.3236263},
        year = {2018}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 16 of 16 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
142	Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer	2019	VLDB	0.00029114937
355	Bao: Making Learned Query Optimization Practical	2021	SIGMOD	0.00020146245
3,282	Estimating Cardinalities with Deep Sketches	2019	SIGMOD	7.4491295e-05
3,328	Auto-WLM: Machine Learning Enhanced Workload Management in Amazon Redshift	2023	SIGMOD	7.4094448e-05
4,302	A Method for Optimizing Opaque Filter Queries	2020	SIGMOD	6.6614501e-05
4,833	Stage: Query Execution Time Prediction in Amazon Redshift	2024	SIGMOD	6.3834856e-05
5,687	HMAB: Self-Driving Hierarchy of Bandits for Integrated Physical Database Design Tuning	2023	VLDB	6.0201937e-05
6,046	Efficient and Effective Similar Subtrajectory Search with Deep Reinforcement Learning	2020	VLDB	5.8881195e-05
6,725	Simple Adaptive Query Processing vs. Learned Query Optimizers: Observations and Analysis	2023	VLDB	5.6826988e-05
7,561	Learned Offline Query Planning via Bayesian Optimization	2025	SIGMOD	5.4784915e-05
8,361	MONSOON: Multi-Step Optimization and Execution of Queries with Partially Obscured Predicates	2020	SIGMOD	5.3310744e-05
9,182	Making Data Clouds Smarter at Keebo: Automated Warehouse Optimization using Data Learning	2023	SIGMOD	5.1985233e-05
9,553	Optimizing Distributed Protocols with Query Rewrites	2024	SIGMOD	5.1496254e-05
10,143	Still Asking: How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?	2025	VLDB	5.0597449e-05
11,011	Ultron: History-Based Query Optimization at Databricks	2026	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
11,866	SIFTER: Space-Efficient Value Iteration for Finite-Horizon MDPs	2023	VLDB	4.9605343e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 22 of 22 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
15	How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?	2016	VLDB	0.00061463175
53	Eddies: Continuously Adaptive Query Processing	2000	SIGMOD	0.00040739114
79	Practical Selectivity Estimation through Adaptive Sampling	1990	SIGMOD	0.00036394222
98	LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer	2001	VLDB	0.00034050614
224	Self-Driving Database Management Systems	2017	CIDR	0.00023973185
346	Sequential Sampling Procedures For Query Size Estimation	1992	SIGMOD	0.00020265363
397	Worst-case Optimal Join Algorithms	2012	PODS	0.0001911958
568	Towards a Robust Query Optimizer: A Principled and Practical Approach	2005	SIGMOD	0.00016221103
628	Performance Prediction for Concurrent Database Workloads	2011	SIGMOD	0.00015421836
646	Exploiting Statistics on Query Expressions for Optimization	2002	SIGMOD	0.00015166402
676	Robust Estimation of Resource Consumption for SQL Queries using Statistical Techniques	2012	VLDB	0.00014838681
838	Proactive Re-Optimization	2005	SIGMOD	0.00013528646
1,109	Maximizing the Output Rate of Multi-Way Join Queries over Streaming Information Sources	2003	VLDB	0.00011949421
1,261	Sampling-Based Query Re-Optimization	2016	SIGMOD	0.00011289724
1,987	Plan Bouquets: Query Processing without Selectivity Estimation	2014	SIGMOD	9.2323722e-05
2,174	A Black-Box Approach to Query Cardinality Estimation	2007	CIDR	8.9067128e-05
3,531	Identifying Robust Plans through Plan Diagram Reduction	2008	VLDB	7.2065332e-05
4,088	Dynamically Optimizing Queries over Large Scale Data Platforms	2014	SIGMOD	6.7973616e-05
4,672	Automated Statistics Collection in DB2 UDB	2004	VLDB	6.4593469e-05
5,394	PREDIcT: Towards Predicting the Runtime of Large Scale Iterative Analytics	2013	VLDB	6.1351004e-05
5,611	StatAdvisor: Recommending Statistical Views	2009	VLDB	6.0498181e-05
6,405	QUEST: An Exploratory Approach to Robust Query Processing	2014	VLDB	5.7791099e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	4,990	Budget-aware Index Tuning with Reinforcement Learning	2022	SIGMOD
2	10,057	The Data Interaction Game	2018	SIGMOD
3	1,175	Balsa: Learning a Query Optimizer Without Expert Demonstrations	2022	SIGMOD
4	7,394	ADOPT: Adaptively Optimizing Attribute Orders for Worst-Case Optimal Join Algorithms via Reinforcement Learning	2023	VLDB
5	4,765	Machine Learning for Databases	2021	VLDB
6	8,872	SkinnerMT: Parallelizing for Efficiency and Robustness in Adaptive Query Processing on Multicore Platforms	2023	VLDB
7	11,856	Demonstrating ADOPT: Adaptively Optimizing Attribute Orders for Worst-Case Optimal Joins via Reinforcement Learning	2023	VLDB
8	4,508	LearnedSQLGen: Constraint-aware SQL Generation using Reinforcement Learning	2022	SIGMOD
9	3,062	Towards a Hands-Free Query Optimizer through Deep Learning	2019	CIDR
10	1,609	SkinnerDB: Regret-Bounded Query Evaluation via Reinforcement Learning	2019	SIGMOD