The document discusses cost estimation in query optimization. It explains that the query optimizer should estimate the cost of different execution strategies and choose the strategy with the minimum estimated cost. The cost functions used are estimates and depend on factors like selectivity. The main cost components include access cost to storage, storage cost, computation cost, memory use cost, and communication cost. For different types and sizes of databases, the emphasis may be on minimizing different cost components, such as access cost for large databases. The document provides examples of cost functions for select and join operations that consider factors like index levels, block sizes, and selectivity.