Adaptive Query Processing surveys the fundamental issues, techniques, costs, and benefits of adaptive query processing. It begins with a broad overview of the field, identifying the dimensions of adaptive techniques. It then looks at the spectrum of approaches available to adapt query execution at runtime - primarily in a non-streaming context. The emphasis is on simplifying and abstracting the key concepts of each technique, rather than reproducing the full details available in the papers.

The authors identify the strengths and limitations of the different techniques, demonstrate when they are most useful, and suggest possible avenues of future research. It serves as a valuable reference for students of databases, providing a thorough survey of the area. Database researchers will benefit from a more complete point of view, including a number of approaches which they may not have focused on within the scope of their own research.