FOSS: A Self-Learned Doctor for Query Optimizer

Various works have utilized deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to address the query optimization problem in database system. They either learn to construct plans from scratch in a bottom-up manner or guide the plan generation behavior of traditional optimizer using hints. While these methods have achieved some success, they face challenges in either low training efficiency or limited plan search space. To address these challenges, we introduce FOSS, a novel DRL-based framework for query optimization. FOSS initiates optimization from the original plan generated by a traditional optimizer and incrementally refines suboptimal nodes of the plan through a sequence of actions. Additionally, we devise an asymmetric advantage model to evaluate the advantage between two plans. We integrate it with a traditional optimizer to form a simulated environment. Leveraging this simulated environment, FOSS can bootstrap itself to rapidly generate a large amount of high-quality simulated experiences. FOSS then learns and improves its optimization capability from these simulated experiences. We evaluate the performance of FOSS on Join Order Benchmark, TPC-DS, and Stack Overflow. The experimental results demonstrate that FOSS outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of latency performance and optimization time. Compared to PostgreSQL, FOSS achieves savings ranging from 15% to 83% in total latency across different benchmarks.