QUERY TRANSFORMATION AND SIMPLIFICATION FOR GROUP BY QUERIES WITH ROLLUP/GROUPING SETS IN RELATIONAL DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

A method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for optimizing database queries, wherein the query is analyzed to determine whether the query includes at least one GROUP BY operation that computes at least one of the following: (1) a ROLLUP and (2) a GROUPING SET, and when it does, the query is rewritten to optimize one or more predicates that are applied after the GROUP BY operation. The query is also analyzed to determine whether the query includes at least one GROUP BY operation that computes two or more stacked GROUP BY operations, and when it does, the query is rewritten to collapse the stacked GROUP BY operations into a single GROUP BY operation.