Reducing the Braking Distance of an SQL Query Engine

In a recent paper, we proposed adding a STOP AFTER clause to SQL to permit the cardinality of a query result to be explicitly limited by query writers and query tools. We demonstrated the usefulness of having this clause, showed how to extend a traditional cost-based query optimizer to accommodate it, and demonstrated via DB2-based simulations that large performance gains are possible when STOP AFTER queries are explicitly supported by the database engine. In this paper, we present several new strategies for efficiently processing STOP AFTER queries. These strategies, based largely on the use of range partitioning techniques, offer significant additional savings for handling STOP AFTER queries that yield sizeable result sets. We describe classes of queries where such savings would indeed arise and present experimental measurements that show the benefits and tradeoffs associated with the new processing strategies.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: VLDB
• Authors: Michael J. Carey, Donald Kossmann
• Keywords: Cost-based Query Optimizer, Database, STOP AFTER Clause, STOP AFTER Queries, VLDB 1998