How to Architect a Query Compiler, Revisited

Summary: Revisits query compiler design via Futamura projections, showing that a single generation pass can be competitive. LB2 demonstrates injected indexes, string dictionaries, and code-motion in a high-level pipeline, matching or beating top TPC-H results. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h6f7c8e5a737ea7d7
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2018
Pagerank: 8.4923505e-05
Overall Rank: 2,419 | 83.74%
DOI: 10.1145/3183713.3196893

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Ruby Y. Tahboub (Purdue University)
2. Grégory M. Essertel (Purdue University)
3. Tiark Rompf (Purdue University)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{tahboub_sigmod18,
        title = {{How to Architect a Query Compiler, Revisited}},
        author = {Tahboub, Ruby Y. and Essertel, Grégory M. and Rompf, Tiark},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '18},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/3183713.3196893},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3183713.3196893},
        year = {2018}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 20 of 20 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
605	Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Compiled and Vectorized Queries But Were Afraid to Ask	2018	VLDB	0.00015647561
1,786	Procedural Extensions of SQL: Understanding their usage in the wild	2021	VLDB	9.6326265e-05
1,803	Tuplex: Data Science in Python at Native Code Speed	2021	SIGMOD	9.6068397e-05
2,264	An Intermediate Representation for Optimizing Machine Learning Pipelines	2019	VLDB	8.7289107e-05
2,663	A Layered Aggregate Engine for Analytics Workloads	2019	SIGMOD	8.1581558e-05
3,985	Designing an Open Framework for Query Optimization and Compilation	2022	VLDB	6.8730085e-05
4,671	GeCo: Quality Counterfactual Explanations in Real Time	2021	VLDB	6.4764543e-05
5,230	Babelfish: Efficient Execution of Polyglot Queries	2022	VLDB	6.2189001e-05
5,543	Charting the Design Space of Query Execution using VOILA	2021	VLDB	6.0889645e-05
6,742	Mitigating the Impedance Mismatch between Prediction Query Execution and Database Engine	2025	SIGMOD	5.6910432e-05
7,580	Bringing Compiling Databases to RISC Architectures	2023	VLDB	5.491668e-05
8,207	Architecting a Query Compiler for Spatial Workloads	2020	SIGMOD	5.3778259e-05
8,560	Efficient Incrementialization of Correlated Nested Aggregate Queries using Relative Partial Aggregate Indexes (RPAI)	2022	SIGMOD	5.3142933e-05
8,600	Flare & Lantern: Efficiently Swapping Horses Midstream	2019	VLDB	5.305412e-05
9,600	Language-Agnostic Integrated Queries in a Managed Polyglot Runtime	2021	VLDB	5.1548991e-05
9,652	Window Function Expression: Let the Self-join Enter	2024	VLDB	5.1453267e-05
10,889	Rhyme Native: Efficient Code Generation for Structured and Semi-Structured Workloads	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
10,914	FastCompose: Eliminating Compilation Cold Starts in Query Execution with Composition	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,672	mutable: A Modern DBMS for Research and Fast Prototyping	2023	CIDR	4.9793485e-05
11,765	Asymptotically Better Query Optimization Using Indexed Algebra	2023	VLDB	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 19 of 19 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
21	Efficiently Compiling Efficient Query Plans for Modern Hardware	2011	VLDB	0.00056855599
23	Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark	2015	SIGMOD	0.00055406774
35	Hekaton: SQL Server’s Memory-Optimized OLTP Engine	2013	SIGMOD	0.00048001919
215	Morsel-Driven Parallelism: A NUMA-Aware Query Evaluation Framework for the Many-Core Age	2014	SIGMOD	0.00024598661
327	Impala: A Modern, Open-Source SQL Engine for Hadoop	2015	CIDR	0.0002095191
495	Building Efficient Query Engines in a High-Level Language	2014	VLDB	0.00017370758
1,196	Daytona And The Fourth-Generation Language Cymbal	1999	SIGMOD	0.00011572943
1,271	Managing Intra-operator Parallelism in Parallel Database Systems	1995	VLDB	0.00011252507
1,380	H2O: A Hands-free Adaptive Store	2014	SIGMOD	0.00010862758
1,386	SPADE: The System S Declarative Stream Processing Engine	2008	SIGMOD	0.00010843396
1,444	An Architecture for Compiling UDF-centric Workflows	2015	VLDB	0.0001063181
1,473	Voodoo - A Vector Algebra for Portable Database Performance on Modern Hardware	2016	VLDB	0.00010557973
1,742	How to Architect a Query Compiler	2016	SIGMOD	9.7378418e-05
3,069	Adaptive Query Processing on RAW Data	2014	VLDB	7.6822697e-05
3,505	Fast Queries Over Heterogeneous Data Through Engine Customization	2016	VLDB	7.2508161e-05
3,873	DBToaster: A SQL Compiler for High-Performance Delta Processing in Main-Memory Databases	2009	VLDB	6.9539394e-05
6,278	Just-In-Time Data Virtualization: Lightweight Data Management with ViDa	2015	CIDR	5.8263939e-05
7,718	Precision Performance Surgery for PostgreSQL: LLVM-based Expression Compilation, Just in Time	2016	VLDB	5.4683093e-05
7,733	High-Performance Geospatial Analytics in HyPerSpace	2016	SIGMOD	5.4642144e-05

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#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	12,012	Low-Latency Compilation of SQL Queries to Machine Code	2021	VLDB
2	5,455	Evolution of a Compiling Query Engine	2021	VLDB
3	7,580	Bringing Compiling Databases to RISC Architectures	2023	VLDB
4	4,525	Just-in-time compilation for SQL query processing	2013	VLDB
5	10,193	Towards Unifying Query Interpretation and Compilation	2023	CIDR
6	3,985	Designing an Open Framework for Query Optimization and Compilation	2022	VLDB
7	21	Efficiently Compiling Efficient Query Plans for Modern Hardware	2011	VLDB
8	495	Building Efficient Query Engines in a High-Level Language	2014	VLDB
9	8,207	Architecting a Query Compiler for Spatial Workloads	2020	SIGMOD
10	1,742	How to Architect a Query Compiler	2016	SIGMOD