Join ordering is one of the core problems of query optimization, as differences in join order can affect the execution time of queries by orders of magnitudes. Unfortunately the problem is NP hard in general, and real world queries can join hundreds of relations, which makes exact solutions prohibitive expensive. In this talk we show how to tackle the join ordering problem by using a search space linearization technique. This adaptive optimization mechanism allows for a smooth transition from guaranteed optimality to a more greedy approach, depending on the size of problem. In practice, a surprisingly large number of queries can be solved optimally or near optimally, with very low optimization times even for hundreds of relations.

Please email for a Zoom link

Thomas Neumann is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich. After his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Mannheim in 2005, he was Senior Researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken until 2010. His research interests are in the areas of database systems, query processing, and query optimization. In 2020, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.