Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries

Summary: Tutorial on bridging the execution-model mismatch between SQL engines and UDFs. Surveys physical optimization and compilation techniques, compares recent systems, and highlights open gaps and research directions for analytics/ML workloads. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID: h9bf4cfbcf6296c68
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2023
Pagerank: 5.4105672e-05
Overall Rank: 7,988 | 46.32%
DOI: 10.14778/3611540.3611574
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Yannis Foufoulas (Athena Research Center; University of Athens)
2. Alkis Simitsis (Athena Research Center)

BibTeX Citation

@article{foufoulas_vldb23,
        title = {{Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries}},
        author = {Foufoulas, Yannis and Simitsis, Alkis},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '23},
        volume = {16},
        number = {12},
        pages = {3874--3877},
        doi = {10.14778/3611540.3611574},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3611540.3611574},
        year = {2023}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 7 of 7 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
6,747	Mitigating the Impedance Mismatch between Prediction Query Execution and Database Engine	2025	SIGMOD	5.6883491e-05
9,467	HyperBlocker: Accelerating Rule-based Blocking in Entity Resolution using GPUs	2025	VLDB	5.1709969e-05
9,700	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB	5.1372261e-05
10,459	EncoderForge: Generating Efficient SQL for Encoders in Machine Learning Inference Pipelines	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
10,842	ReSequel: Robust LLM-assisted Query Rewriting and Optimization using Templatization and Sampling	2026	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,177	UDFBench: A Tool for Benchmarking UDF Queries on SQL Engines	2025	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
11,186	Approximating Opaque Top-k Queries	2025	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05

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
605	Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Compiled and Vectorized Queries But Were Afraid to Ask	2018	VLDB	0.00015640305
896	Froid: Optimization of Imperative Programs in a Relational Database	2018	VLDB	0.00013203085
1,193	Weld: A Common Runtime for High Performance Data Analytics	2017	CIDR	0.00011582619
1,445	An Architecture for Compiling UDF-centric Workflows	2015	VLDB	0.00010628379
1,803	Tuplex: Data Science in Python at Native Code Speed	2021	SIGMOD	9.602292e-05
2,184	Extending Relational Query Processing with ML Inference	2020	CIDR	8.8953085e-05
2,208	Magpie: Python at Speed and Scale using Cloud Backends	2021	CIDR	8.8445332e-05
2,251	Evaluating End-to-End Optimization for Data Analytics Applications in Weld	2018	VLDB	8.750953e-05
2,707	Compiling PL/SQL Away	2020	CIDR	8.1073034e-05
2,778	AIDA - Abstraction for Advanced In-Database Analytics	2018	VLDB	8.0261532e-05
2,994	Extracting Equivalent SQL from Imperative Code in Database Applications	2016	SIGMOD	7.7685417e-05
3,103	On Optimizing Operator Fusion Plans for Large-Scale Machine Learning in SystemML	2018	VLDB	7.6456038e-05
3,385	Putting Pandas in a Box	2021	CIDR	7.3515238e-05
3,645	User-Defined Operators: Efficiently Integrating Custom Algorithms into Modern Databases	2022	VLDB	7.1383149e-05
4,062	Aggify: Lifting the Curse of Cursor Loops using Custom Aggregates	2020	SIGMOD	6.8215782e-05
5,234	Babelfish: Efficient Execution of Polyglot Queries	2022	VLDB	6.2159562e-05
5,720	Accelerating Python UDFs in Vectorized Query Execution	2022	CIDR	6.0159287e-05
5,811	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD	5.9846446e-05
6,215	YeSQL: "You extend SQL" with Rich and Highly Performant User-Defined Functions in Relational Databases	2022	VLDB	5.8453061e-05
6,402	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD	5.7953646e-05
6,711	Machine Learning, Linear Algebra, and More: Is SQL All You Need?	2022	CIDR	5.7011955e-05
8,831	Boosting Efficiency of External Pipelines by Blurring Application Boundaries	2022	CIDR	5.2665331e-05
13,919	BabbleFlow - A Translator for Analytic Data Flow Programs	2014	SIGMOD	-

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	5,016	User-Defined Aggregate Functions: Bridging Theory and Practice	2006	SIGMOD
2	12,806	Fast and Dynamic OLAP Exploration Using UDFs	2009	SIGMOD
3	1,445	An Architecture for Compiling UDF-centric Workflows	2015	VLDB
4	6,086	Dear User-Defined Functions, Inlining isn't working out so great for us. Let's try batching to make our relationship work. Sincerely, SQL	2024	CIDR
5	3,645	User-Defined Operators: Efficiently Integrating Custom Algorithms into Modern Databases	2022	VLDB
6	3,988	Exploiting Correlations for Expensive Predicate Evaluation	2015	SIGMOD
7	11,177	UDFBench: A Tool for Benchmarking UDF Queries on SQL Engines	2025	SIGMOD
8	5,720	Accelerating Python UDFs in Vectorized Query Execution	2022	CIDR
9	6,402	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD
10	9,700	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB