Database and their applications are topics of interest to both academia and industry. However, they have received little attention towards improving the knowledge about their associated faults and failures. This lack o.f knowledge is an impediment to the definition o.f adequate so.ftware testing techniques applicable in this domain and to the develop ment (�f quality so.ftware. We discuss issues arising from SQL manipulation failures and present the results of an investigation aiming at understanding the relationship be tweenfaults andfailures. The analysis (�fdata mapping in dicates that: i) there is a many-to-many mapping between faults andfailures; ii) failure dimensions are dependent on fault type, faulty command, and the database itse(t;-and iii) knowledge o.fthe manipulation faults is crucial to program ming and testing database applications.

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