Patent ID: 7171397

Claim:
A method for measuring parallelism associated with a database execution step in a computer implemented database system where the parallelism is an indicia of database system resources required by the execution step, the method including the steps of: determining whether the execution step operates only on rows having a specified primary index; if the primary index of the rows is specified, the parallelism for the execution step is measured as single; if the primary index of the rows is not specified, determining whether the execution step uses an output from a first previous execution step, the output having a number of rows; if the output is not used by the execution step, the parallelism for the execution step is measured as total; if the output is used by the execution step, comparing the number of rows in the output to a specified number; and if the number of rows is greater than the specified number, the parallelism for the execution step is measured as total.