QO-Insight: Inspecting Steered Query Optimizers

Steered query optimizers address the planning mistakes of traditional query optimizers by providing them with hints on a per-query basis, thereby guiding them in the right direction. This paper introduces QO-Insight, a visual tool designed for exploring query execution traces of such steered query optimizers. Although steered query optimizers are typically perceived as black boxes, QO-Insight empowers database administrators and experts to gain qualitative insights and enhance their performance through visual inspection and analysis.