1. An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; a memory coupled to the at least one processor; a database residing in the memory having data; a query optimizer residing in the memory that parses a query to identify a base table of the database with a materialized query table (MQT) in deferred maintenance; and wherein the query optimizer autonomically determines whether to update the MQT or execute the query over the base table by estimating a time to execute the query over the base table corresponding to the MQT, estimating a time to update the MQT, comparing the estimated time to update the MQT and the estimated time to execute the query over the base table; and wherein the query optimizer updates the MQT where the estimated time to update the MQT is less than the time to execute the query over the base table; and executes the query over the updated MQT.