We show that deep reinforcement learning is successful at optimizing SQL joins, a problem studied for decades in the database community.  Further, on large joins, we show that this technique executes up to 10x faster than classical dynamic programs and 10,000x faster than exhaustive enumeration.  This blog post introduces the problem and summarizes our key technique; details can be found in our latest preprint, Learning to Optimize Join Queries With Deep Reinforcement Learning. SQL query optimization has been studied in the database community for almost 40 years, dating all the way back from System R’s classical dynamic programming approach.  Central to query optimization is the problem of join ordering.  Despite the problem’s rich history, there is still a continuous stream…