A method and apparatus for performing recursive database operations is provided. According to one aspect, a plurality of first-stage slaves and a plurality of second-stage slaves are established in a database server. During one or more iterations of a recursive database operation, the first-stage slaves concurrently process data items stored in a data repository and send results to the second-stage slaves. The second-stage slaves receive the results and concurrently process those results. The second-stage slaves store the results of the second-stage slaves' processing in the data repository. Subsequent iterations of the recursive database operation proceed in this manner until the recursive database operation has been completed. In each iteration, the first-stage slaves consume the product of the second-stage slaves' previous iteration's processing, and the second-stage slaves consume the product of the first-stage slaves' current iteration's processing.