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Can Large Language Models Be Query Optimizer for Relational Databases?

Summary: Explores using LLMs as query optimizers by autoregressively generating PostgreSQL execution plans from serialized DB metadata, queries and plans (QInstruct), avoiding explicit plan enumeration. Proposes two-stage fine-tuning (Qit + Qdpo) and shows LLM-QO yields valid, high-quality plans that outperform traditional and learned optimizers on three workloads, suggesting strong generalization and adaptivity. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 11 2026)

Paper ID
h9ca553690d79ab3c
Venue
SIGMOD
Year
2026
Pagerank
5.7428777e-05
Overall Rank
6,575 | 55.81%
DOI
10.1145/3769771

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{tan_sigmod26,
        title = {{Can Large Language Models Be Query Optimizer for Relational Databases?}},
        author = {Tan, Jie and Zhao, Kangfei and Li, Rui and Yu, Jeffrey Xu and Piao, Chengzhi and Cheng, Hong and Meng, Helen and Zhao, Deli and Rong, Yu},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '26},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/3769771},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3769771},
        year = {2026}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 8 of 8 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
3,900 SQLStorm: Taking Database Benchmarking into the LLM Era 2025 VLDB 6.9320915e-05
10,427 Automated Discovery of Test Oracles for Database Management Systems Using LLMs 2026 SIGMOD 4.9769913e-05
10,607 SEFRQO: A Self-Evolving Fine-Tuned RAG-Based Query Optimizer 2026 SIGMOD 4.9769913e-05
10,708 LIO: A lightweight and interpretable query optimizer based on an evolutionary forest 2026 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
10,842 ReSequel: Robust LLM-assisted Query Rewriting and Optimization using Templatization and Sampling 2026 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
10,892 QDBO: A Real-time Quantum-augmented Database System Optimizer 2026 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
10,927 Evaluating the Practical Effectiveness of LLM-Driven Index Tuning on Microsoft SQL Server 2026 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
10,950 Ultron: History-Based Query Optimization at Databricks 2026 VLDB 4.9769913e-05
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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
1 Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System 1979 SIGMOD 0.0023943337
15 How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2016 VLDB 0.00061067652
144 Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer 2019 VLDB 0.00029090793
272 An Overview of Query Optimization in Relational Systems 1998 PODS 0.0002251422
361 Bao: Making Learned Query Optimization Practical 2021 SIGMOD 0.00020000855
496 Language Models Enable Simple Systems for Generating Structured Views of Heterogeneous Data Lakes 2024 VLDB 0.00017318538
655 CAESURA: Language Models as Multi-Modal Query Planners 2024 CIDR 0.00015090153
1,195 Balsa: Learning a Query Optimizer Without Expert Demonstrations 2022 SIGMOD 0.00011574218
1,515 DSB: A Decision Support Benchmark for Workload-Driven and Traditional Database Systems 2021 VLDB 0.00010418766
1,977 Table-GPT: Table Fine-tuned GPT for Diverse Table Tasks 2024 SIGMOD 9.2760522e-05
2,037 LLM-R^2: A Large Language Model Enhanced Rule-based Rewrite System for Boosting Query Efficiency 2025 VLDB 9.1494269e-05
2,209 Lero: A Learning-to-Rank Query Optimizer 2023 VLDB 8.8360101e-05
2,227 GPTuner: A Manual-Reading Database Tuning System via GPT-Guided Bayesian Optimization 2024 VLDB 8.8007923e-05
2,686 Cost-based or Learning-based? A Hybrid Query Optimizer for Query Plan Selection 2022 VLDB 8.1300913e-05
2,720 TPC-DS, Taking Decision Support Benchmarking to the Next Level 2002 SIGMOD 8.0936194e-05
4,784 Data-Juicer: A One-Stop Data Processing System for Large Language Models 2024 SIGMOD 6.4132742e-05
6,072 Demonstrating GPT-DB: Generating Query-Specific and Customizable Code for SQL Processing with GPT-4 2023 VLDB 5.8936535e-05
6,298 Is Your Learned Query Optimizer Behaving As You Expect? A Machine Learning Perspective 2024 VLDB 5.8177684e-05
8,271 Automated Data Visualization from Natural Language via Large Language Models: An Exploratory Study 2024 SIGMOD 5.362576e-05
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Semantically Similar Papers

# Overall Rank Paper Year Venue
1 11,863 DeepO: A Learned Query Optimizer 2022 SIGMOD
2 10,607 SEFRQO: A Self-Evolving Fine-Tuned RAG-Based Query Optimizer 2026 SIGMOD
3 11,033 Bridging LLMs and Database Systems: A Deep Dive into Enhanced Relational Operators 2026 VLDB
4 10,842 ReSequel: Robust LLM-assisted Query Rewriting and Optimization using Templatization and Sampling 2026 VLDB
5 2,037 LLM-R^2: A Large Language Model Enhanced Rule-based Rewrite System for Boosting Query Efficiency 2025 VLDB
6 11,459 RankPQO: Learning-to-Rank for Parametric Query Optimization 2025 VLDB
7 10,296 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
8 10,371 Leveraging Query Optimizers to Verify the Soundness of LLM-based Query Rewrites for Real-World Workloads, and More! 2026 CIDR
9 3,717 Logical and Physical Optimizations for SQL Query Execution over Large Language Models 2025 SIGMOD
10 6,298 Is Your Learned Query Optimizer Behaving As You Expect? A Machine Learning Perspective 2024 VLDB