Techniques are provided for optimizing workload performance by automatically discovering and implementing performance optimizations for in-memory units (IMUs). A system maintains a set of IMUs for processing database operations in a database. The system obtains a database workload information for the database system and filters the database workload information to identify database operations in the database workload information that may benefit from performance optimizations. The system analyzes the database operations to identify a set of performance optimizations and ranks the performance optimizations based on their potential benefit. The system selects a subset of the performance optimizations, based on their ranking, and generates new versions of IMUs that reflect the performance optimizations. The system performs verification tests on the new versions of IMUs and analyzes the tests to determine whether the new versions of IMUs yield expected performance benefits. The system then categorizes the new set of IMUs into a first set of IMUs to be retained and a second set of IMUs to be discarded. The system then makes the first set of IMUs available to the current workload and discards the second set of IMUs.