This post continues the study of ‘Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System’ (Selinger et al., 1979), now covering chapter 4 and the cost formulas the optimizer uses to compare access paths for a single relation.

This post is a study dump. I’ve been reading ‘Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System’ (Selinger et al., 1979) and stopped at chapter 3 to consolidate what I learned.