It's an example. But not of that.

It's an example of old things being new again maybe. Or reinventing the wheel because the wheel wasn't known to them.

Yes I know, nobody wants to pay that tax or make that guy richer, but databases like Oracle have had JPPD for a long time. It's just something the database does and the optimizer chooses whether to do it or not depending on whether it's the best thing to do or not.

Exactly. This is a basic optimization technique and all the dinosaur era databases should have that. But if you build a new database product you have to implement these techniques from scratch. There is no way you shortcut that. Reminds me about CockroachDB and them building a query optimizer[1]. They started with rule based one and then switched to cost based. Feature that older databases already had.

[1] https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/building-cost-based-sql-o...