Gradient-Based Join Ordering

ArXi:2511.14482v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Join ordering is the NP-hard problem of selecting the most efficient order in which to evaluate joins (conjunctive, binary operators) in a database query. Because query execution performance critically depends on this choice, join ordering lies at the core of query optimization. Traditional approaches cast this problem as a discrete combinatorial search over binary trees guided by a cost model, but they have trade-offs between effectiveness and efficiency.