A query, issued to a database server, is re-written with a nested materialized view. The selected materialized view is nested within a “parent” materialized view that has one or more nesting levels for one or more nested materialized views. The selected nested materialized view has a cardinality associated therewith, which is lower than the cardinality associated with any of the other nested materialized views, and is nested at a final nesting level of the one or more nesting levels.