Embodiments of the present invention address deficiencies of the art in respect to database query management and execution and provide a novel and non-obvious method, system and apparatus for processing an adaptive query expression in an on-demand data service. In one embodiment of the invention, an adaptive query handling method can include receiving an initial query in a database driven application, parsing the initial query to identify a query expression key, matching the query expression key to an adaptive query expression, and transforming the adaptive query expression to a final query expression through a replacement of annotations in the adaptive query expression with static expressions conforming to a query language for the final query expression. Thereafter, the final query expression can be applied to a database subsystem for the database driven application.