The query processer and optimizer is an important component in today’s relational database management system. This component is responsible for translating a user query, usually written in a non-procedural language like SQL – into an efficient query evaluation program that can be executed against database. In this paper, we identify many of the common issues, themes, and approaches that extend this work and the settings in which each piece of work is most appropriate. Our goal with this paper is to be a “value-add” over the existing papers on the material, providing not only a brief overview of each technique, but also a basic framework for understating the field of query processing and optimization in general.