Trampoline-Style Queries for SQL

Louisa Lambrecht • Torsten Grust • Altan Birler (TUM) • Thomas Neumann (TUM)

CIDR 2025, 15th Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR 2025), January 19-22, 2025, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{lambrecht2025trampoline,
  author    = {Lambrecht, Louisa and Grust, Torsten and Birler, Altan and Neumann, Thomas},
  title     = {{Trampoline-Style Queries for SQL}},
  booktitle = {Proc.\ CIDR},
  address   = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
  year      = {2025}
}

We introduce trampoline-style queries as an alternative expressive foundation for iterative computation in SQL. A trampoline repeatedly executes a family of branch queries which can exercise fine-grained control over (1) the routing of rows between iterations and (2) the emission of output rows. We relate trampoline-style queries to the established recursive CTEs, provide a taste of how trampolines elegantly cover a wide range of applications, and shed light on strategies for their massively parallel implementation inside contemporary relational database systems.