A system and method for answering a relational database query is presented. According to an embodiment of the present invention, a database query is received. It is then determined whether that query can be rewritten in such a manner as to be able to utilize a precomputed view, such that an answer to the rewritten query is equivalent to an answer to the original query. If the query can be rewritten, it is determined whether the rewritten query can more efficiently derive the answer than the original query. The query which has the most efficiently derived answer is the query which is utilized to derive that answer.