A rule-based view of query optimization

The query optimizer is an important system component of a relational database management system (DBMS). It is the responsibility of this component to translate the user-submitted query-usually written in a non-procedural language-into an efficient query evaluation plan (QEP) which is then executed against the database. The research literature describes a wide variety of optimization strategies for different query languages and implementation environments. However, very little is known about how to design and structure the query optimization component to implement these strategies.This paper proposes a first step towards the design of a modular query optimizer. We describe its operations by transformation rules which generate different QEPs from initial query specifications. As we distinguish different aspects of the query optimization process, our hope is that the approach taken in this paper will contribute to the more general goal of a modular query optimizer as part of an extensible database management system.