SkinnerMT: Parallelizing for Efficiency and Robustness in Adaptive Query Processing on Multicore Platforms

SkinnerMT is an adaptive query processing engine, specialized for multi-core platforms. SkinnerMT features different strategies for parallel processing that allow users to trade between average run time and performance robustness. First, SkinnerMT supports execution strategies that execute multiple query plans in parallel, thereby reducing the risk to find near-optimal plans late and improving robustness. Second, SkinnerMT supports data-parallel processing strategies. Its parallel multi-way join algorithm is sensitive to the assignment from tuples to threads. Here, SkinnerMT uses a cost-based optimization strategy, based on runtime feedback. Finally, SkinnerMT supports hybrid processing methods, mixing parallel search with data-parallel processing. The experiments show that parallel search increases robustness while parallel processing increases average-case performance. The hybrid approach combines advantages from both. Compared to traditional database systems, SkinnerMT is preferable for benchmarks where query optimization is hard. Compared to prior adaptive processing baselines, SkinnerMT exploits parallelism better.