Implementations of the present disclosure include receiving, by a query processing server, a first query, the first query including a syntax indicating that precision loss is allowed, processing, by the query processing server, the first query to provide a first QEP, optimization of which would result in precision loss in a generated query result, determining that the syntax is provided, and in response, optimizing the first QEP to provide an optimized QEP, executing the optimized QEP to generate a query result that includes data stored within a database system, the query result having reduced accuracy relative to a query result that would be generated based on the first QEP, and providing the query result as output from the database system.