A method and system for optimizing a query in a snow flake schema (60) within a relational database. The schema (60) includes a fact table (12) and multiple dimension tables and a plurality of dimension levels, with at least one dimension table at each level. A logical node (310) comprised of a level one child dimension table (32) and all dimension tables (62) rooted at this level one child dimension table is created based upon the cumulative selectivity calculation for all of the dimension tables at each level of the database (210). Creation of the logical node reduces a snow flake schema to a star schema, thereby mitigating search space traversal.