https://tech.daniellbastos.com.br/tags/relational-database/Recent content in Relational Database on Daniel's Tech BlogHugoen-usFri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://tech.daniellbastos.com.br/posts/access-path-selection-relational-database-management-system/Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://tech.daniellbastos.com.br/posts/access-path-selection-relational-database-management-system/<blockquote> <p>This post is a study dump. I&rsquo;ve been reading <a href="https://courses.cs.duke.edu/compsci516/cps216/spring03/papers/selinger-etal-1979.pdf">Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System (Selinger et al., 1979)</a> and stopped at chapter 3 to consolidate what I learned. I used available internet resource and tools to go deeper on the examples and make the concepts more concrete.</p> </blockquote> <h2 id="what-the-paper-covers">What the paper covers</h2> <p>The paper describes how System R, an experimental relational database built at IBM in the 1970s, chooses access paths to execute SQL queries. You write SQL declaratively, without specifying how data is accessed or in what order joins happen. The optimizer decides both, minimizing total access cost.</p>