Abstract: Intelligent, transaction-aware table placement minimizes cross-host transactions while supporting full transactional semantics and delivering high throughput at low resource utilization. This placement reducing delays caused by cross-host transaction coordination. Examples determine a count of historical interactions between tables, based on at least a transaction history for a plurality of cross-table transactions. Each table provides an abstraction for data, such as by identifying data objects stored in a data lake. For tables on different hosts, having high count of historical interactions, potential cost savings achievable by moving operational control of a first table to the same host as the second table is compared with the potential cost savings achievable by moving operational control of the second table to the same host as the first table. Based on comparing the relative cost savings, one of the tables may be selected.