Autonomous query-driven index mining

Index tuning as part of database tuning is the task of selecting and creating indexes with the goal of reducing query processing times. However, in dynamic environments with various ad-hoc queries it is difficult to identify potentially useful indexes in advance. We investigate an approach addressing this problem by deciding about index creation automatically at runtime in order to speed up processing of subsequent queries. We present a cost model taking into account the benefits of indexes for an evolving query workload and discuss strategies for choosing indexes to be created in a space-limited environment.