Compiling PL/SQL Away

Summary: Compile arbitrary PL/SQL functions, including loops and branching, into equivalent SQL subqueries (iteration → SQL recursion) to remove PL/SQL↔SQL context switches. Embedding function logic into the enclosing query enables global optimization and yields substantial cross-RDBMS speedups, challenging the "PL/SQL is slow" belief. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: haa8317c1709a3a95
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2020
Pagerank: 8.1111408e-05
Overall Rank: 2,705 | 81.82%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Christian Duta (University of Tübingen)
2. Denis Hirn (University of Tübingen)
3. Torsten Grust (University of Tübingen)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{duta_cidr20,
        address = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
        series = {{CIDR} '20},
        title = {{Compiling PL/SQL Away}},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Innovative} {Data} {Systems} {Research}},
        author = {Duta, Christian and Hirn, Denis and Grust, Torsten},
        year = {2020}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 19 of 19 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,786	Procedural Extensions of SQL: Understanding their usage in the wild	2021	VLDB	9.6326265e-05
3,194	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD	7.5498012e-05
3,642	User-Defined Operators: Efficiently Integrating Custom Algorithms into Modern Databases	2022	VLDB	7.1416697e-05
4,061	Aggify: Lifting the Curse of Cursor Loops using Custom Aggregates	2020	SIGMOD	6.824809e-05
5,230	Babelfish: Efficient Execution of Polyglot Queries	2022	VLDB	6.2189001e-05
5,719	Accelerating Python UDFs in Vectorized Query Execution	2022	CIDR	6.0187779e-05
5,809	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD	5.987479e-05
5,903	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD	5.9523418e-05
6,212	YeSQL: "You extend SQL" with Rich and Highly Performant User-Defined Functions in Relational Databases	2022	VLDB	5.8480745e-05
6,400	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD	5.7981078e-05
6,575	WeBridge: Synthesizing Stored Procedures for Large-Scale Real-World Web Applications	2024	SIGMOD	5.7453775e-05
7,448	A Fix for the Fixation on Fixpoints	2023	CIDR	5.5239801e-05
7,983	Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries	2023	VLDB	5.4131297e-05
8,207	Architecting a Query Compiler for Spatial Workloads	2020	SIGMOD	5.3778259e-05
8,673	Adaptive Code Generation for Data-Intensive Analytics	2021	VLDB	5.2913671e-05
8,822	Boosting Efficiency of External Pipelines by Blurring Application Boundaries	2022	CIDR	5.2690274e-05
9,694	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB	5.1396592e-05
11,797	To UDFs and Beyond: Demonstration of a Fully Decomposed Data Processor for General Data Wrangling Tasks	2023	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,932	Accelerating Complex Analytics using Speculation	2021	CIDR	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 4 of 4 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
552	Orthogonal Optimization of Subqueries and Aggregation	2001	SIGMOD	0.0001653835
896	Froid: Optimization of Imperative Programs in a Relational Database	2018	VLDB	0.00013209291
1,274	Rewriting Procedures for Batched Bindings	2008	VLDB	0.00011247334
12,555	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB	4.9793485e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	289	Optimization of Dynamic Query Evaluation Plans	1994	SIGMOD
2	14,546	Supporting Procedural Constructs in SQL Compilers	1996	VLDB
3	12,012	Low-Latency Compilation of SQL Queries to Machine Code	2021	VLDB
4	10,223	SQL Engines Excel at the Execution of Imperative Programs	2024	VLDB
5	6,400	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD
6	5,809	Snakes on a Plan: Compiling Python Functions into Plain SQL Queries	2022	SIGMOD
7	12,555	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB
8	4,525	Just-in-time compilation for SQL query processing	2013	VLDB
9	3,194	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD
10	5,903	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD