In a method, system, and computer-readable medium having instructions for optimizing a query in a database system, a database statistic is generated for a number of related records for one or more entities for at least one tenant and a related record is a record with a relationship to a shared record in a database table for an entity from the one or more entities, a first cost is calculated for accessing the number of related records for at least one tenant, a second cost is calculated for accessing a number of related records accessible to a user, a comparison of the first cost to the second cost is performed to determine a data access path for retrieving accessible related records, and the data access path for retrieving accessible related records is determined based upon the comparison.