Database systems play an important role in nearly every modern organization, yet relatively little research effort has focused on how to test them. This paper discusses issues arising in testing database systems, presents an approach to testing database applications, and describes AGENDA, a set of tools to facilitate the use of this approach. In testing such applications, the state of the database before and after the user's operation plays an important role, along with the user's input and the system output. A framework for testing database applications is introduced. A complete tool set, based on this framework, has been prototyped. The components of this system are a parsing tool that gathers relevant information from the database schema and application, a tool that populates the database with meaningful data that satisfy database constraints, a tool that generates test cases for the application, a tool that checks the resulting database state after operations are performed by a database application, and a tool that assists the tester in checking the database application's output. The design and implementation of each component of the system are discussed. The prototype described here is limited to applications consisting of a single SQL query.

AGENDA is a tool set for testing relational database applications. An earlier prototype was targeted to applications consisting of a single query and included components for populating a database with data suitable for testing the application, generating inputs to the query, and checking relatively simple aspects of the results of executing the query. This paper describes substantial extensions to AGENDA, allowing it to test transactions with multiple queries and with complex intended behavior. The paper introduces a technique for checking complex properties of the database state transition performed by the transaction under test, as well as an improved input generation heuristic. Results of using AGENDA to test three applications with seeded faults are presented.

No abstract

No abstract

Database systems play an important role in nearly every modern organization, yet relatively little research effort has focused on how to test them. This paper discusses issues arising in testing database systems and presents an approach to testing database applications. In testing such applications, the state of the database before and after the user's operation plays an important role, along with the user's input and the system output. A tool for populating the database with meaningful data that satisfy database constraints has been prototyped. Its design and its role in a larger database application testing tool set are discussed.