A prediction regarding one or more functions can be made for a database environment. In particular, a predication can be made with respect to values stored in at least one column of at least one table in a database, based on the evaluation of one or more functions for a subset of possible column values (i.e., resultant values derived from the evaluation of a subset of possible column values) without the need to calculate the function(s) for all of the actual entries in the column of the table(s). In effect, a functional predicate can be transformed (or translated) to a predicate that is dependent on the column values instead of the evaluation of one or more functions for the column values.