Query Plan

Synonyms

Operator tree; Query evaluation plan; Query execution plan; Query plan; Query tree

Definition

A query or execution plan for a query specifies precisely how the query is to be executed. Most often, the plan for a query is represented as a tree whose internal nodes are operators and its leaves correspond to the input relations of the query. The edges of the tree indicate the data flow among the operators. The query plan is executed by the query execution engine.

Key Points

During query processing, an input query is transformed into an internal representation, most often, into a relational algebra expression. To specify how to evaluate a query precisely, each relational operator is then mapped to one or more physical operators, which provide several alternative implementations of relational operators.

A query plan for each query specifies the physical operators to be used for its execution and the order of their invocation. Most commonly, a query plan is represented as a tree....