The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 21, 1999
Filed:
May. 09, 1997
Michael James Carey, San Jose, CA (US);
Donald Alan Kossmann, Passau, DE;
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A STOP AFTER clause for a relational database management system (RDBMS) structured query language (SQL) causes the RDBMS, in response to a query, to return a query result having at most a predetermined cardinality specified in the query. A query with a STOP AFTER clause is processed by the RDBMS by provision of one or more STOP operators that are inserted into a query execution plan generated by the RDBMS to execute the query. In a conservative policy, STOP operators are inserted in the query execution plan such that no tuples that might be required in the query result are discarded. In contrast, an aggressive policy inserts a STOP operator in the query execution plan wherever it is able to provide a beneficial cardinality reduction. A RESTART operator is inserted into aggressive policy query execution plans to ensure that at least the predetermined number of tuples are returned in the query result, and a final STOP operator is added at or near the root of the plan to ensure that at most the specified number of tuples are produced.