Database Indexing and Query Processing

Motivation

Although planned as a self-contained event not requiring familiarity with its predecessors, this Dagstuhl Seminar is part of a successful Dagstuhl Seminar series and thus continues and complements the earlier Dagstuhl Seminars 10381, 12321, and 17222, where participants discussed, researched, and wrote about various aspects of robust performance in database query processing including indexing, database access, query optimization, and query execution.

In 2022, we will go beyond smooth scans and join algorithms. We will renew the series’ focus on robust techniques for operation sequences, in particular join sequences, on robust query processing over column storage, and on streams and updates, e.g., write-optimized index formats. More recent topics include emerging storage devices as well as learned techniques for indexing, query optimization, and query execution. All of these techniques affect not only efficiency and scalability but also robustness of query performance. While most prior research focuses on efficiency and scalability, we will review prior techniques and their effect on robustness of performance and thus on predictability and user satisfaction.

During the seminar, we will spend some time educating each other and then pick specific hard problems that we can hope to solve during an intense week of design discussions and drafting possible publications to advance the field of database query processing and specifically robust performance in database services. Attendees should be prepared to contribute to discussions and new collaborative designs.