Chapter 15: Query Processing

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Chapter 15: Query Processing

 Overview
 Measures of Query Cost
 Selection Operation
 Sorting
 Join Operation
 Other Operations
 Evaluation of Expressions

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps in Query Processing

1. Parsing and translation

2. Optimization
3. Evaluation

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps in Query Processing (Cont.)

 Parsing and translation

• translate the query into its internal form. This is then translated into
relational algebra.
• Parser checks syntax, verifies relations
 Evaluation
• The query-execution engine takes a query-evaluation plan,
executes that plan, and returns the answers to the query.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps in Query Processing:
Optimization
 A relational algebra expression may have many equivalent expressions
• E.g., salary75000(salary(instructor)) is equivalent to
salary(salary75000(instructor))
 Each relational algebra operation can be evaluated using one of several
different algorithms
• Correspondingly, a relational-algebra expression can be evaluated in
many ways.
 Annotated expression specifying detailed evaluation strategy is called an
evaluation-plan. E.g.,:
• Use an index on salary to find instructors with salary < 75000,
• Or perform complete relation scan and discard instructors with salary
 75000

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Basic Steps: Optimization (Cont.)

 Query Optimization: Amongst all equivalent evaluation plans choose

the one with lowest cost.
• Cost is estimated using statistical information from the
database catalog
 e.g.. number of tuples in each relation, size of tuples, etc.
 In this chapter we study
• How to measure query costs
• Algorithms for evaluating relational algebra operations
• How to combine algorithms for individual operations in order to
evaluate a complete expression
 In Chapter 16
• We study how to optimize queries, that is, how to find an evaluation
plan with lowest estimated cost

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Measures of Query Cost

 Many factors contribute to time cost

• disk access, CPU, and network communication
 Cost can be measured based on
• response time, i.e. total elapsed time for answering query, or
• total resource consumption
 We use total resource consumption as cost metric
• Response time harder to estimate, and minimizing resource
consumption is a good idea in a shared database
 We ignore CPU costs for simplicity
• Real systems do take CPU cost into account
• Network costs must be considered for parallel systems
 We describe how estimate the cost of each operation
• We do not include cost to writing output to disk

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Measures of Query Cost

 Disk cost can be estimated as:

• Number of seeks * average-seek-cost
• Number of blocks read * average-block-read-cost
• Number of blocks written * average-block-write-cost
 For simplicity we just use the number of block transfers from disk and
the number of seeks as the cost measures
• tT – time to transfer one block
 Assuming for simplicity that write cost is same as read cost
• tS – time for one seek
• Cost for b block transfers plus S seeks
b * tT + S * t S
 tS and tT depend on where data is stored; with 4 KB blocks:
• High end magnetic disk: tS = 4 msec and tT =0.1 msec
• SSD: tS = 20-90 microsec and tT = 2-10 microsec for 4KB

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Measures of Query Cost (Cont.)

 Required data may be buffer resident already, avoiding disk I/O

• But hard to take into account for cost estimation
 Several algorithms can reduce disk IO by using extra buffer space
• Amount of real memory available to buffer depends on other
concurrent queries and OS processes, known only during execution
 Worst case estimates assume that no data is initially in buffer and only the
minimum amount of memory needed for the operation is available
• But more optimistic estimates are used in practice

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Selection Operation

 File scan
 Algorithm A1 (linear search). Scan each file block and test all records
to see whether they satisfy the selection condition.
• Cost estimate = br block transfers + 1 seek
 br denotes number of blocks containing records from relation r
• If selection is on a key attribute, can stop on finding record
 cost = (br /2) block transfers + 1 seek
• Linear search can be applied regardless of
 selection condition or
 ordering of records in the file, or
 availability of indices
 Note: binary search generally does not make sense since data is not
stored consecutively
• except when there is an index available,
• and binary search requires more seeks than index search

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Selections Using Indices

 Index scan – search algorithms that use an index

• selection condition must be on search-key of index.
 A2 (clustering index, equality on key). Retrieve a single record that
satisfies the corresponding equality condition
• Cost = (hi + 1) * (tT + tS)
 A3 (clustering index, equality on nonkey) Retrieve multiple records.
• Records will be on consecutive blocks
 Let b = number of blocks containing matching records
• Cost = hi * (tT + tS) + tS + tT * b

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Selections Using Indices

 A4 (secondary index, equality on key/non-key).

• Retrieve a single record if the search-key is a candidate key
 Cost = (hi + 1) * (tT + tS)
• Retrieve multiple records if search-key is not a candidate key
 each of n matching records may be on a different block
 Cost = (hi + n) * (tT + tS)
• Can be very expensive!

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Selections Involving Comparisons

 Can implement selections of the form AV (r) or A  V(r) by using

• a linear file scan,
• or by using indices in the following ways:
 A5 (clustering index, comparison). (Relation is sorted on A)
 For A  V(r) use index to find first tuple  v and scan relation
sequentially from there
 For AV (r) just scan relation sequentially till first tuple > v; do not
use index
 A6 (clustering index, comparison).
 For A  V(r) use index to find first index entry  v and scan index
sequentially from there, to find pointers to records.
 For AV (r) just scan leaf pages of index finding pointers to
records, till first entry > v
 In either case, retrieve records that are pointed to
 requires an I/O per record; Linear file scan may be cheaper!

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Implementation of Complex Selections

 Conjunction: 1 2. . . n(r)

 A7 (conjunctive selection using one index).
• Select a combination of i and algorithms A1 through A7 that results
in the least cost for i (r).
• Test other conditions on tuple after fetching it into memory buffer.
 A8 (conjunctive selection using composite index).
• Use appropriate composite (multiple-key) index if available.
 A9 (conjunctive selection by intersection of identifiers).
• Requires indices with record pointers.
• Use corresponding index for each condition, and take intersection of
all the obtained sets of record pointers.
• Then fetch records from file
• If some conditions do not have appropriate indices, apply test in
memory.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Algorithms for Complex Selections

 Disjunction:1 2 . . . n (r).
 A10 (disjunctive selection by union of identifiers).
• Applicable if all conditions have available indices.
 Otherwise use linear scan.
• Use corresponding index for each condition, and take union of all the
obtained sets of record pointers.
• Then fetch records from file
 Negation: (r)
• Use linear scan on file
• If very few records satisfy , and an index is applicable to 
 Find satisfying records using index and fetch from file

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Bitmap Index Scan

 The bitmap index scan algorithm of PostgreSQL

• Bridges gap between secondary index scan and linear file scan
when number of matching records is not known before execution
• Bitmap with 1 bit per page in relation
• Steps:
 Index scan used to find record ids, and set bit of corresponding
page in bitmap
 Linear file scan fetching only pages with bit set to 1
• Performance
 Similar to index scan when only a few bits are set
 Similar to linear file scan when most bits are set
 Never behaves very badly compared to best alternative

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Sorting

 We may build an index on the relation, and then use the index to read
the relation in sorted order. May lead to one disk block access for each
tuple.
 For relations that fit in memory, techniques like quicksort can be used.
• For relations that don’t fit in memory, external merge sort is a good
choice.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example: External Sorting Using Merge Sort

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 External Merge Sort

Let M denote memory size (in pages).

1. Create sorted runs. Let i be 0 initially.
Repeatedly do the following till the end of the relation:
(a) Read M blocks of relation into memory
(b) Sort the in-memory blocks
(c) Write sorted data to run Ri; increment i.

Let the final value of i be N

2. Merge the runs (next slide)…..

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 External Merge Sort (Cont.)

2. Merge the runs (N-way merge). We assume (for now) that N < M.
1. Use N blocks of memory to buffer input runs, and 1 block to buffer
output. Read the first block of each run into its buffer page
2. repeat
1. Select the first record (in sort order) among all buffer pages
2. Write the record to the output buffer. If the output buffer is full
write it to disk.
3. Delete the record from its input buffer page.
If the buffer page becomes empty then
read the next block (if any) of the run into the buffer.
3. until all input buffer pages are empty:

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 External Merge Sort (Cont.)

 If N  M, several merge passes are required.

• In each pass, contiguous groups of M - 1 runs are merged.
• A pass reduces the number of runs by a factor of M -1, and creates
runs longer by the same factor.
 E.g. If M=11, and there are 90 runs, one pass reduces the
number of runs to 9, each 10 times the size of the initial runs
• Repeated passes are performed till all runs have been merged into
one.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 External Merge Sort (Cont.)

 Cost analysis:
• 1 block per run leads to too many seeks during merge
 Instead use bb buffer blocks per run
 read/write bb blocks at a time
 Can merge M/bb–1 runs in one pass
• Total number of merge passes required: log M/bb–1(br/M).
• Block transfers for initial run creation as well as in each pass is 2br
 for final pass, we don’t count write cost
• we ignore final write cost for all operations since the output of
an operation may be sent to the parent operation without
being written to disk
 Thus total number of block transfers for external sorting:
br ( 2 log M/bb–1 (br / M) + 1) 
• Seeks: next slide

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 External Merge Sort (Cont.)

 Cost of seeks
• During run generation: one seek to read each run and one seek
to write each run
 2 br / M
• During the merge phase
 Need 2 br / bb seeks for each merge pass
• except the final one which does not require a write
 Total number of seeks:
2 br / M + br / bb (2 logM/bb–1(br / M) -1)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Schema Diagram for University Database

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Join Operation

 Several different algorithms to implement joins

• Nested-loop join
• Block nested-loop join
• Indexed nested-loop join
• Merge-join
• Hash-join
 Choice based on cost estimate
 Examples use the following information
• Number of records of student: 5,000 takes: 10,000
• Number of blocks of student: 100 takes: 400

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Nested-Loop Join

 To compute the theta join r ⨝ s

for each tuple tr in r do begin
for each tuple ts in s do begin
test pair (tr,ts) to see if they satisfy the join condition 
if they do, add tr • ts to the result.
end
end
 r is called the outer relation and s the inner relation of the join.
 Requires no indices and can be used with any kind of join condition.
 Expensive since it examines every pair of tuples in the two relations.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Nested-Loop Join (Cont.)

 In the worst case, if there is enough memory only to hold one block of
each relation, the estimated cost is
nr  bs + br block transfers, plus nr + br seeks
 If the smaller relation fits entirely in memory, use that as the inner
relation.
• Reduces cost to br + bs block transfers and 2 seeks
 Assuming worst case memory availability cost estimate is
• with student as outer relation:
 5000  400 + 100 = 2,000,100 block transfers,
 5000 + 100 = 5100 seeks
• with takes as the outer relation
 10000  100 + 400 = 1,000,400 block transfers and 10,400 seeks
 If smaller relation (student) fits entirely in memory, the cost estimate will
be 500 block transfers and 2 seeks.
 Block nested-loops algorithm (next slide) is preferable.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Block Nested-Loop Join

 Variant of nested-loop join in which every block of inner relation is

paired with every block of outer relation.
for each block Br of r do begin
for each block Bs of s do begin
for each tuple tr in Br do begin
for each tuple ts in Bs do begin
Check if (tr,ts) satisfy the join condition
if they do, add tr • ts to the result.
end
end
end
end

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Block Nested-Loop Join (Cont.)

 Worst case estimate: br  bs + br block transfers + 2 * br seeks

• Each block in the inner relation s is read once for each block in the
outer relation
 Best case: br + bs block transfers + 2 seeks.
 Improvements to nested loop and block nested loop algorithms:
• In block nested-loop, use M — 2 disk blocks as blocking unit for
outer relations, where M = memory size in blocks; use remaining
two blocks to buffer inner relation and output
 Cost = br / (M-2)  bs + br block transfers +
2 br / (M-2) seeks
• If equi-join attribute forms a key or inner relation, stop inner loop on
first match
• Scan inner loop forward and backward alternately, to make use of
the blocks remaining in buffer (with LRU replacement)
• Use index on inner relation if available (next slide)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indexed Nested-Loop Join

 Index lookups can replace file scans if

• join is an equi-join or natural join and
• an index is available on the inner relation’s join attribute
 Can construct an index just to compute a join.
 For each tuple tr in the outer relation r, use the index to look up tuples
in s that satisfy the join condition with tuple tr.
 Worst case: buffer has space for only one page of r, and, for each
tuple in r, we perform an index lookup on s.
 Cost of the join: br (tT + tS) + nr  c
• Where c is the cost of traversing index and fetching all matching s
tuples for one tuple or r
• c can be estimated as cost of a single selection on s using the
join condition.
 If indices are available on join attributes of both r and s,
use the relation with fewer tuples as the outer relation.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Nested-Loop Join Costs

 Compute student ⨝ takes, with student as the outer relation.

 Let takes have a primary B+-tree index on the attribute ID, which contains
20 entries in each index node.
 Since takes has 10,000 tuples, the height of the tree is 4, and one more
access is needed to find the actual data
 student has 5000 tuples
 Cost of block nested loops join
• 400*100 + 100 = 40,100 block transfers + 2 * 100 = 200 seeks
 assuming worst case memory
 may be significantly less with more memory
 Cost of indexed nested loops join
• 100 + 5000 * 5 = 25,100 block transfers and seeks.
• CPU cost likely to be less than that for block nested loops join

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Merge-Join

1. Sort both relations on their join attribute (if not already sorted on the join
attributes).
2. Merge the sorted relations to join them
1. Join step is similar to the merge stage of the sort-merge algorithm.
2. Main difference is handling of duplicate values in join attribute —
every pair with same value on join attribute must be matched
3. Detailed algorithm in book

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Merge-Join (Cont.)

 Can be used only for equi-joins and natural joins

 Each block needs to be read only once (assuming all tuples for any
given value of the join attributes fit in memory
 Thus the cost of merge join is:
br + bs block transfers + br / bb + bs / bb seeks
+ the cost of sorting if relations are unsorted.
 hybrid merge-join: If one relation is sorted, and the other has a
secondary B+-tree index on the join attribute
• Merge the sorted relation with the leaf entries of the B+-tree .
• Sort the result on the addresses of the unsorted relation’s tuples
• Scan the unsorted relation in physical address order and merge with
previous result, to replace addresses by the actual tuples
 Sequential scan more efficient than random lookup

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hash-Join

 Applicable for equi-joins and natural joins.

 A hash function h is used to partition tuples of both relations
 h maps JoinAttrs values to {0, 1, ..., n}, where JoinAttrs denotes the
common attributes of r and s used in the natural join.
• r0, r1, . . ., rn denote partitions of r tuples
 Each tuple tr  r is put in partition ri where i = h(tr [JoinAttrs]).
• s0,, s1. . ., sn denotes partitions of s tuples
 Each tuple ts s is put in partition si, where i = h(ts [JoinAttrs]).
 Note: In book, Figure 12.10 ri is denoted as Hri, si is denoted as Hsi and
n is denoted as nh.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hash-Join (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hash-Join (Cont.)

 r tuples in ri need only to be compared with s tuples in si Need not be

compared with s tuples in any other partition, since:
• an r tuple and an s tuple that satisfy the join condition will have the
same value for the join attributes.
• If that value is hashed to some value i, the r tuple has to be in ri and
the s tuple in si.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hash-Join Algorithm

The hash-join of r and s is computed as follows.

1. Partition the relation s using hashing function h. When partitioning a
relation, one block of memory is reserved as the output buffer for
each partition.
2. Partition r similarly.
3. For each i:
(a)Load si into memory and build an in-memory hash index on it
using the join attribute. This hash index uses a different hash
function than the earlier one h.
(b)Read the tuples in ri from the disk one by one. For each tuple tr
locate each matching tuple ts in si using the in-memory hash
index. Output the concatenation of their attributes.

Relation s is called the build input and r is called the probe input.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hash-Join algorithm (Cont.)

 The value n and the hash function h is chosen such that each si should
fit in memory.
• Typically n is chosen as bs/M * f where f is a “fudge factor”,
typically around 1.2
• The probe relation partitions ri need not fit in memory
 Recursive partitioning required if number of partitions n is greater than
number of pages M of memory.
• instead of partitioning n ways, use M – 1 partitions for s
• Further partition the M – 1 partitions using a different hash function
• Use same partitioning method on r
• Rarely required: e.g., with block size of 4 KB, recursive partitioning
not needed for relations of < 1GB with memory size of 2MB, or
relations of < 36 GB with memory of 12 MB

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling of Overflows

 Partitioning is said to be skewed if some partitions have significantly more

tuples than some others
 Hash-table overflow occurs in partition si if si does not fit in memory.
Reasons could be
• Many tuples in s with same value for join attributes
• Bad hash function
 Overflow resolution can be done in build phase
• Partition si is further partitioned using different hash function.
• Partition ri must be similarly partitioned.
 Overflow avoidance performs partitioning carefully to avoid overflows
during build phase
• E.g., partition build relation into many partitions, then combine them
 Both approaches fail with large numbers of duplicates
• Fallback option: use block nested loops join on overflowed partitions

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Cost of Hash-Join

 If recursive partitioning is not required: cost of hash join is

3(br + bs) +4  nh block transfers +
2( br / bb + bs / bb) seeks
 If recursive partitioning required:
• number of passes required for partitioning build relation s to less
than M blocks per partition is logM/bb–1(bs/M)
• best to choose the smaller relation as the build relation.
• Total cost estimate is:
2(br + bs) logM/bb–1(bs/M) + br + bs block transfers +
2(br / bb + bs / bb) logM/bb–1(bs/M)  seeks
 If the entire build input can be kept in main memory no partitioning is
required
• Cost estimate goes down to br + bs.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Cost of Hash-Join

instructor ⨝ teaches

 Assume that memory size is 20 blocks

 binstructor= 100 and bteaches = 400.
 instructor is to be used as build input. Partition it into five partitions,
each of size 20 blocks. This partitioning can be done in one pass.
 Similarly, partition teaches into five partitions,each of size 80. This
is also done in one pass.
 Therefore total cost, ignoring cost of writing partially filled blocks:
• 3(100 + 400) = 1500 block transfers +
2( 100/3 + 400/3) = 336 seeks

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Hybrid Hash–Join

 Useful when memory sized are relatively large, and the build input is
bigger than memory.
 Main feature of hybrid hash join:
Keep the first partition of the build relation in memory.
 E.g. With memory size of 25 blocks, instructor can be partitioned into five
partitions, each of size 20 blocks.
• Division of memory:
 The first partition occupies 20 blocks of memory
 1 block is used for input, and 1 block each for buffering the other
4 partitions.
 teaches is similarly partitioned into five partitions each of size 80
• the first is used right away for probing, instead of being written out
 Cost of 3(80 + 320) + 20 +80 = 1300 block transfers for
hybrid hash join, instead of 1500 with plain hash-join.
 Hybrid hash-join most useful if M >>

bs

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Complex Joins

 Join with a conjunctive condition:

r ⨝ 1  2...   n s
• Either use nested loops/block nested loops, or
• Compute the result of one of the simpler joins r ⨝ i s
 final result comprises those tuples in the intermediate result that
satisfy the remaining conditions
1  . . .  i –1  i +1  . . .  n
 Join with a disjunctive condition
r ⨝ 1  2 ...  n s
• Either use nested loops/block nested loops, or
• Compute as the union of the records in individual joins r ⨝ i s:
(r ⨝ 1 s)  (r ⨝ 2 s)  . . .  (r ⨝ n s)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Joins over Spatial Data

 No simple sort order for spatial joins

 Indexed nested loops join with spatial indices
• R-trees, quad-trees, k-d-B-trees

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Other Operations

 Duplicate elimination can be implemented via hashing or sorting.

• On sorting duplicates will come adjacent to each other, and all but
one set of duplicates can be deleted.
• Optimization: duplicates can be deleted during run generation as
well as at intermediate merge steps in external sort-merge.
• Hashing is similar – duplicates will come into the same bucket.
 Projection:
• perform projection on each tuple
• followed by duplicate elimination.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Other Operations : Aggregation

 Aggregation can be implemented in a manner similar to duplicate

elimination.
• Sorting or hashing can be used to bring tuples in the same
group together, and then the aggregate functions can be applied
on each group.
• Optimization: partial aggregation
 combine tuples in the same group during run generation and
intermediate merges, by computing partial aggregate values
 For count, min, max, sum: keep aggregate values on tuples
found so far in the group.
• When combining partial aggregate for count, add up the
partial aggregates
 For avg, keep sum and count, and divide sum by count at the
end

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 Other Operations : Set Operations

 Set operations (,  and ): can either use variant of merge-join after
sorting, or variant of hash-join.
 E.g., Set operations using hashing:
1. Partition both relations using the same hash function
2. Process each partition i as follows.
1. Using a different hashing function, build an in-memory hash
index on ri.
2. Process si as follows
• r  s:
1. Add tuples in si to the hash index if they are not already
in it.
2. At end of si add the tuples in the hash index to the
result.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.47 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Other Operations : Set Operations

 E.g., Set operations using hashing:

1. as before partition r and s,
2. as before, process each partition i as follows
1. build a hash index on ri
2. Process si as follows
• r  s:
1. output tuples in si to the result if they are already there in
the hash index
• r – s:
1. for each tuple in si, if it is there in the hash index, delete
it from the index.
2. At end of si add remaining tuples in the hash index to
the result.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Answering Keyword Queries

 Indices mapping keywords to documents

• For each keyword, store sorted list of document IDs that contain
the keyword
 Commonly referred to as a inverted index
 E.g.,: database: d1, d4, d11, d45, d77, d123
distributed: d4, d8, d11, d56, d77, d121, d333
• To answer a query with several keywords, compute intersection of
lists corresponding to those keywords
 To support ranking, inverted lists store extra information
• “Term frequency” of the keyword in the document
• “Inverse document frequency” of the keyword
• Page rank of the document/web page

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.49 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Other Operations : Outer Join

 Outer join can be computed either as

• A join followed by addition of null-padded non-participating tuples.
• by modifying the join algorithms.
 Modifying merge join to compute r ⟕ s
• In r ⟕ s, non participating tuples are those in r – R(r ⨝ s)
• Modify merge-join to compute r ⟕ s:
 During merging, for every tuple tr from r that do not match any
tuple in s, output tr padded with nulls.
• Right outer-join and full outer-join can be computed similarly.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.50 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Other Operations : Outer Join

 Modifying hash join to compute r ⟕ s

• If r is probe relation, output non-matching r tuples padded with nulls
• If r is build relation, when probing keep track of which
r tuples matched s tuples. At end of si output
non-matched r tuples padded with nulls

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.51 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Evaluation of Expressions

 So far: we have seen algorithms for individual operations

 Alternatives for evaluating an entire expression tree
• Materialization: generate results of an expression whose inputs
are relations or are already computed, materialize (store) it on
disk. Repeat.
• Pipelining: pass on tuples to parent operations even as an
operation is being executed
 We study above alternatives in more detail

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.52 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Materialization

 Materialized evaluation: evaluate one operation at a time, starting at

the lowest-level. Use intermediate results materialized into temporary
relations to evaluate next-level operations.
 E.g., in figure below, compute and store
 building "Watson " (department )
then compute the store its join with instructor, and finally compute the
projection on name.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.53 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Materialization (Cont.)

 Materialized evaluation is always applicable

 Cost of writing results to disk and reading them back can be quite high
• Our cost formulas for operations ignore cost of writing results to
disk, so
 Overall cost = Sum of costs of individual operations +
cost of writing intermediate results to disk
 Double buffering: use two output buffers for each operation, when one
is full write it to disk while the other is getting filled
• Allows overlap of disk writes with computation and reduces
execution time

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.54 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Pipelining

 Pipelined evaluation: evaluate several operations simultaneously,

passing the results of one operation on to the next.
 E.g., in previous expression tree, don’t store result of
 building"Watson" (department )
• instead, pass tuples directly to the join.. Similarly, don’t store result of
join, pass tuples directly to projection.
 Much cheaper than materialization: no need to store a temporary relation
to disk.
 Pipelining may not always be possible – e.g., sort, hash-join.
 For pipelining to be effective, use evaluation algorithms that generate
output tuples even as tuples are received for inputs to the operation.
 Pipelines can be executed in two ways: demand driven and producer
driven

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 Pipelining (Cont.)

 In demand driven or lazy evaluation

• system repeatedly requests next tuple from top level operation
• Each operation requests next tuple from children operations as
required, in order to output its next tuple
• In between calls, operation has to maintain “state” so it knows what
to return next
 In producer-driven or eager pipelining
• Operators produce tuples eagerly and pass them up to their parents
 Buffer maintained between operators, child puts tuples in buffer,
parent removes tuples from buffer
 if buffer is full, child waits till there is space in the buffer, and then
generates more tuples
• System schedules operations that have space in output buffer and
can process more input tuples
 Alternative name: pull and push models of pipelining

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 Pipelining (Cont.)

 Implementation of demand-driven pipelining

• Each operation is implemented as an iterator implementing the
following operations
 open()
• E.g., file scan: initialize file scan
 state: pointer to beginning of file
• E.g., merge join: sort relations;
 state: pointers to beginning of sorted relations
 next()
• E.g., for file scan: Output next tuple, and advance and store
file pointer
• E.g., for merge join: continue with merge from earlier state
till next output tuple is found. Save pointers as iterator state.
 close()

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.57 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Blocking Operations

 Blocking operations: cannot generate any output until all input is

consumed
• E.g., sorting, aggregation, …
 But can often consume inputs from a pipeline, or produce outputs to a
pipeline
 Key idea: blocking operations often have two suboperations
• E.g., for sort: run generation and merge
• For hash join: partitioning and build-probe
 Treat them as separate operations

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.58 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Pipeline Stages

 Pipeline stages:
• All operations in a stage run concurrently
• A stage can start only after preceding stages have completed
execution

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.59 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Evaluation Algorithms for Pipelining

 Some algorithms are not able to output results even as they get input
tuples
• E.g., merge join, or hash join
• intermediate results written to disk and then read back
 Algorithm variants to generate (at least some) results on the fly, as
input tuples are read in
• E.g., hybrid hash join generates output tuples even as probe
relation tuples in the in-memory partition (partition 0) are read in
• Double-pipelined join technique: Hybrid hash join, modified to
buffer partition 0 tuples of both relations in-memory, reading them
as they become available, and output results of any matches
between partition 0 tuples
 When a new r0 tuple is found, match it with existing s0 tuples,
output matches, and save it in r0
 Symmetrically for s0 tuples

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.60 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Pipelining for Continuous-Stream Data

 Data streams
• Data entering database in a continuous manner
• E.g., Sensor networks, user clicks, …
 Continuous queries
• Results get updated as streaming data enters the database
• Aggregation on windows is often used
 E.g., tumbling windows divide time into units, e.g., hours,
minutes
 Need to use pipelined processing algorithms
• Punctuations used to infer when all data for a window has been
received

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.61 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Query Processing in Memory

 Query compilation to machine code

• Overheads of interpretation
 E.g., repeatedly finding attribute location within tuple, from
metadata
 Overhead of expression evaluation
• Compilation can avoid many such overheads and speed up query
processing
• Often via generation of Java byte code / LLVM, with just-in-time
(JIT) compilation
 Column-oriented storage
• Allows vector operations (in conjunction with compilation)
 Cache conscious algorithms

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 Cache Conscious Algorithms

 Goal: minimize cache misses, make best use of data fetched into the
cache as part of a cache line
 For sorting:
• Use runs that are as large as L3 cache (a few megabytes) to avoid
cache misses during sorting of a run
• Then merge runs as usual in merge-sort
 For hash-join
• First create partitions such that build+probe partitions fit in memory
• Then subpartition further s.t. build subpartition+index fits in L3
cache
 Speeds up probe phase significantly by avoiding cache misses
 Lay out attributes of tuples to maximize cache usage
• Attributes that are often accessed together should be stored
adjacent to each other
 Use multiple threads for parallel query processing
• Cache misses leads to stall of one thread, but others can proceed

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.63 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 End of Chapter 15

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 15.64 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan