In accordance with the teachings described herein, systems and methods are provided for performing index joins. A database management application may receive an instruction to perform an index join operation between columns in a first table and a second table, wherein the database management application does not have direct access to an index of the first table or the second table for performing the index join operation. A query may be automatically generated by the database management application, wherein the query includes a where clause equality expression that equates an indexed column of the second table with a parameter or updatable constant. The database management application may substitute a value from a row of the first table may for the parameter or updatable constant, and cause the query to be executed on the index of the second table to fetch any one or more rows of the second table that satisfy the where clause by having an index value that matches the substituted value. The database management application may then repeat the substituting and executing operations for each row of the first table, and perform the index join operation using the fetched one or more rows.