Patent ID: 8626724

Claim:
A method for recommending row compression on tables in a relational database, said method comprising the steps of: obtaining a workload specification for said database; based on said workload specification, identifying and ranking candidate ones of said tables; evaluating a compression impact on a workload execution time for each of said candidate ones of said tables, wherein said evaluating comprises, for each of said candidate ones of said tables: simulating the workload specification on said database under a configuration wherein a first table of said candidate ones of said tables is compressed and each other table of said candidate ones of said tables is not compressed; determining an estimated workload execution time based on said simulating; comparing said estimated workload execution time to a baseline workload execution time under a configuration wherein each of said candidate ones of said tables is not compressed; and identifying the first table as a table that should be compressed if the estimated execution time is an improvement over the baseline workload execution time; and developing a design for said database, specifying one of: (i) which of said tables should be compressed based on said evaluation, and (ii) which of said tables should not be compressed based on said evaluation.