Anomaly Pattern-guided Transaction Bug Testing in Relational Databases Article Swipe

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Xu Huicong , Liu Shuang , Zhu Xian-yu , Zhuang, Qiyu , Lu Wei , Du Xiaoyong ·

YOU? · · 2025 · Open Access ·

Concurrent transaction processing is a fundamental capability of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMSs), widely utilized in applications requiring high levels of parallel user interaction, such as banking systems, e-commerce platforms, and telecommunications infrastructure. Isolation levels offer a configurable mechanism to manage the interaction between concurrent transactions, enabling varying degrees of consistency and performance trade-offs. These isolation guarantees are supported by all major RDBMSs. However, testing transaction behavior under different isolation levels remains a significant challenge due to two primary reasons. First, automatically generating test transactions that can effectively expose bugs in transaction handling logic is non-trivial, as such bugs are typically triggered under specific transactional constraints. Second, detecting logic anomalies in transaction outcomes is difficult because the correct execution results are often unknown for randomly generated transactions. To address these challenges, we propose an anomaly pattern-guided testing approach for uncovering transaction bugs in RDBMSs. Our solution tackles the first challenge by introducing a test case generation technique guided by predefined anomaly patterns, which increases the likelihood of exposing transactional bugs. For the second challenge, we present a two-phase detection process, involving explicit error detection and implicit error detection, to identify bugs in transaction execution. We have implemented our approach in a tool, APTrans, and evaluated it on three widely-used RDBMSs: MySQL, MariaDB, and OceanBase. APTrans successfully identified 13 previously unknown transaction-related bugs, 11 of which have been confirmed by the respective development teams.

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Computer science Database transaction Consistency (knowledge bases) Transaction processing Distributed transaction Anomaly detection Transaction data Online transaction processing Isolation (microbiology) Debugging Relational database Transactional leadership Transaction processing system Data mining Database Anomaly (physics) Nested transaction Atomicity Transactional memory Rollback Data consistency Distributed computing Programming language Relational model Data integrity Concurrency control

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Landing Page: http://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17377
PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.17377
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OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W7106597303

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Title: Anomaly Pattern-guided Transaction Bug Testing in Relational Databases

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Publication year: 2025

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Publication date: 2025-11-21

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Authors: Xu Huicong, Liu Shuang, Zhu Xian-yu, Zhuang, Qiyu, Lu Wei, Du Xiaoyong

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Landing page: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17377

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Concepts: Computer science, Database transaction, Consistency (knowledge bases), Transaction processing, Distributed transaction, Anomaly detection, Transaction data, Online transaction processing, Isolation (microbiology), Debugging, Relational database, Transactional leadership, Transaction processing system, Data mining, Database, Anomaly (physics), Nested transaction, Atomicity, Transactional memory, Rollback, Data consistency, Distributed computing, Programming language, Relational model, Data integrity, Concurrency control

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