Adaptive early filtering with intra-pipeline predicate back-propagation

Abstract

In an example embodiment, an early filter is applied with a query plan using intra-pipeline predicate back-propagation. Specifically, the query plan may be thought of as a pipeline of operations. A runtime variable var may be introduced, and a specialized filter using var may be pushed down below the join operation. Var is a dynamic variable that is updated to track a value from the sort or similar operation (such as max (heap), reflecting the maximum value of a max-heap used by the sort or similar operation). The runtime variable gets initialized once the heap reaches a minimum number of elements (such as K in the case of a top K sort). Thus, before the heap reaches that minimum number of elements, the filter does not apply. Once the heap does reach that minimum number of elements, the filter does apply and acts to filter elements. Since the filter has been pushed down below the join operation, this saves processing cycles.