A received query is analyzed to provide a set of potential bushy tree operation plans that include the creation of one or more “sub-joins” that provide intermediate resultant “sub-tables”, and using these sub-tables as operands in the other predicates of the query. The received query is analyzed to identify “satellite” tables and “seed” tables. A satellite table is a table of the database that is filtered by a selective predicate, and is connected to only one other table in the database via at least one linking predicate, and a seed table is a table of the database that is connected to a satellite table and at least one other table. Multiple candidate operation plans are formulated as bushy trees that include a sub-join of each seed table and its connected satellite table. A least cost operation plan is selected for execution from among these candidate operation plans and the conventional least cost linear operation plan based on the costs associated with each operation plan.