How to roll a join

TLDR

Incremental refresh of a materialized join view is usually cheaper than a full refresh, yet it can still be a costly atomic operation. The paper proposes an algorithm that performs incremental view maintenance through a sequence of small, asynchronous steps. The algorithm lets users set step size to reduce contention and supports point‑in‑time refreshes, enabling the view to be updated to any time between the last refresh and now.

Abstract

Incremental refresh of a materialized join view is often less expensive than a full, non-incremental refresh. However, it is still a potentially costly atomic operation. This paper presents an algorithm that performs incremental view maintenance as a series of small, asynchronous steps. The size of each step can be controlled to limit contention between the refresh process and concurrent operations that access the materialized view or the underlying relations. The algorithm supports point-in-time refresh, which allows a materialized view to be refreshed to any time between the last refresh and the present.