A query is executed in a massively parallel processing data storage system comprising a master node communicating with a cluster of multiple segments that access data in distributed storage by producing a self-described query plan at the master node that incorporates changeable metadata and information needed to execute the self-described query plan on the segments, and that incorporates references to obtain static metadata and information for functions and operators of the query plan from metadata stores on the segments. The distributed storage may be the Hadoop distributed file system, and the query plan may be a full function SQL query plan.