Selectivity Estimation of Inequality Joins In Databases

Selectivity estimation refers to the ability of the SQL query optimizer to estimate the size of the results of a predicate in the query. It is the main calculation, based on which the optimizer can select the cheapest plan to execute. While the problem is known since the mid 70s, we were surprised that there are no solutions in the literature for the selectivity estimation of inequality joins. By testing four common database systems: Oracle, SQL-Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL, we found that the open-source systems PostgreSQL and MySQL lack this estimation. Oracle and SQL-Server make fairly accurate estimations, yet their algorithms are secret. This paper thus proposes an algorithm for inequality join selectivity estimation. The proposed algorithm has been implemented in PostgreSQL and sent as a patch to be included in the next releases.