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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 3027–3032Cite as

Query Processing (in Relational Databases)

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Synonyms

Query compilation and execution

Definition

Query processing denotes the compilation and execution of a query specification usually expressed in a declarative database query language such as the structured query language (SQL). Query processing consists of a compile-time phase and a runtime phase. At compile-time, the query compiler translates the query specification into an executable program. This translation process (often called query compilation) is comprised of lexical, syntactical, and semantical analysis of the query specification as well as a query optimization and code generation phase. The code generated usually consists of physical operators for a database machine. These operators implement data access, joins, selections, projections, grouping, and aggregation. At runtime, the database engine interprets and executes the program implementing the query specification to produce the query result.

Historical Background

In the 1960s and 1970s, navigational database...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA, USA

    Volker Markl

Authors
  1. Volker Markl
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Volker Markl .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

    Evaggelia Pitoura

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Markl, V. (2018). Query Processing (in Relational Databases). In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_296

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