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: 8.1073034e-05
Overall Rank: 2,707 | 81.81%
DOI: -
PDF: Download (CC BY 3.0)

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	9.6281276e-05
3,195	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD	7.546228e-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
5,906	PL/SQL Without the PL	2020	SIGMOD	5.9495255e-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
6,578	WeBridge: Synthesizing Stored Procedures for Large-Scale Real-World Web Applications	2024	SIGMOD	5.7426577e-05
7,452	A Fix for the Fixation on Fixpoints	2023	CIDR	5.5213651e-05
7,988	Efficient Execution of User-Defined Functions in SQL Queries	2023	VLDB	5.4105672e-05
8,214	Architecting a Query Compiler for Spatial Workloads	2020	SIGMOD	5.3752801e-05
8,681	Adaptive Code Generation for Data-Intensive Analytics	2021	VLDB	5.288863e-05
8,831	Boosting Efficiency of External Pipelines by Blurring Application Boundaries	2022	CIDR	5.2665331e-05
9,700	The UDFBench Benchmark for General-purpose UDF Queries	2025	VLDB	5.1372261e-05
11,803	To UDFs and Beyond: Demonstration of a Fully Decomposed Data Processor for General Data Wrangling Tasks	2023	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,938	Accelerating Complex Analytics using Speculation	2021	CIDR	4.9769913e-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	0.00016530708
896	Froid: Optimization of Imperative Programs in a Relational Database	2018	VLDB	0.00013203085
1,275	Rewriting Procedures for Batched Bindings	2008	VLDB	0.00011242055
12,561	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB	4.9769913e-05

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2	14,551	Supporting Procedural Constructs in SQL Compilers	1996	VLDB
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4	10,229	SQL Engines Excel at the Execution of Imperative Programs	2024	VLDB
5	6,402	Functional-Style SQL UDFs With a Capital 'F'	2020	SIGMOD
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7	12,561	Functions Are Data Too (Defunctionalization for PL/SQL)	2013	VLDB
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9	3,195	One WITH RECURSIVE is Worth Many GOTOs	2021	SIGMOD
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