Elle: Inferring Isolation Anomalies from Experimental Observations

Summary: Elle infers Adya-style dependency graphs from client-observed histories by choosing objects and operations that expose version histories. It soundly detects and distinguishes Adya anomalies (excluding predicates), producing concise explanations and validated results on four databases. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID: h94f31bc359275db2
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2021
Pagerank: 0.00012004972
Overall Rank: 1,102 | 92.60%
DOI: 10.14778/3430915.3430918

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Kyle Kingsbury (Jepsen)
2. Peter Alvaro (University of California Santa Cruz)

BibTeX Citation

@article{kingsbury_vldb21,
        title = {{Elle: Inferring Isolation Anomalies from Experimental Observations}},
        author = {Kingsbury, Kyle and Alvaro, Peter},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '21},
        volume = {14},
        number = {3},
        pages = {268--280},
        doi = {10.14778/3430915.3430918},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3430915.3430918},
        year = {2021}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 27 of 27 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,740	TranAD: Deep Transformer Networks for Anomaly Detection in Multivariate Time Series Data	2022	VLDB	9.7439205e-05
5,054	Detecting Metadata-Related Logic Bugs in Database Systems via Raw Database Construction	2024	VLDB	6.2944842e-05
7,479	Developer’s Responsibility or Database’s Responsibility? Rethinking Concurrency Control in Databases	2023	CIDR	5.5137916e-05
7,567	Database Isolation By Scheduling	2021	VLDB	5.4949954e-05
7,797	Litmus: Towards a Practical Database Management System with Verifiable ACID Properties and Transaction Correctness	2022	SIGMOD	5.4511849e-05
7,829	TDSQL: Tencent Distributed Database System	2024	VLDB	5.4438901e-05
8,400	TOD: GPU-accelerated Outlier Detection via Tensor Operations	2023	VLDB	5.3395906e-05
8,582	ScalarDB: Universal Transaction Manager for Polystores	2023	VLDB	5.3095579e-05
8,878	Efficient Black-box Checking of Snapshot Isolation in Databases	2023	VLDB	5.2570745e-05
9,236	DoppelGanger++: Towards Fast Dependency Graph Generation for Database Replay	2024	SIGMOD	5.2056825e-05
9,403	Detecting Schema-Related Logic Bugs in Relational DBMSs via Equivalent Database Construction	2025	VLDB	5.1833519e-05
9,791	TiQuE: Improving the Transactional Performance of Analytical Systems for True Hybrid Workloads	2023	VLDB	5.1259267e-05
10,060	Simple Testing Can Expose Most Critical Transaction Bugs: Understanding and Detecting Write-Specific Serializability Violations in Database Systems	2025	VLDB	5.0875952e-05
10,061	Finding Logic Bugs in Spatial Database Engines via Affine Equivalent Inputs	2024	SIGMOD	5.0875952e-05
10,073	VeriTxn: Verifiable Transactions for Cloud-Native Databases with Storage Disaggregation	2023	SIGMOD	5.0856783e-05
10,434	Detecting Join Bugs in Database Engines via Join Implication Reasoning	2026	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
10,536	Testing Graph Databases with Synthesized Queries	2026	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
10,721	Pisco: An Isolation Bug Case Reduction and Deduplication Framework	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,044	Fast Verification of Strong Database Isolation	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,134	TXSQL: Lock Optimizations Towards High Contented Workloads	2025	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
11,228	VerIso: Verifiable Isolation Guarantees for Database Transactions	2025	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,378	Design and Modular Verification of Distributed Transactions in MongoDB	2025	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,463	Leopard: A General Test Suite for Isolation Level Verification	2024	CIDR	4.9793485e-05
11,547	Understanding and Reusing Test Suites Across Database Systems	2024	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
11,630	IsoVista: Black-box Checking Database Isolation Guarantees	2024	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,687	Allocating Isolation Levels to Transactions in a Multiversion Setting	2023	PODS	4.9793485e-05
11,913	IsoBugView: Interactively Debugging Isolation Bugs in Database Applications	2022	VLDB	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 4 of 4 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
55	Calvin: Fast Distributed Transactions for Partitioned Database Systems	2012	SIGMOD	0.00040471598
237	Serializable Isolation for Snapshot Databases	2008	SIGMOD	0.00023660039
775	Lazy Database Replication with Snapshot Isolation	2006	VLDB	0.00014081697
2,691	Allocating Isolation Levels to Transactions	2005	PODS	8.1249357e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	10,137	Deciding Robustness for Lower SQL Isolation Levels	2020	PODS
2	10,072	RushMon: Real-time Isolation Anomalies Monitoring	2018	SIGMOD
3	11,463	Leopard: A General Test Suite for Isolation Level Verification	2024	CIDR
4	5,077	DBPA: A Benchmark for Transactional Database Performance Anomalies	2023	SIGMOD
5	11,630	IsoVista: Black-box Checking Database Isolation Guarantees	2024	VLDB
6	11,044	Fast Verification of Strong Database Isolation	2026	VLDB
7	11,228	VerIso: Verifiable Isolation Guarantees for Database Transactions	2025	VLDB
8	11,336	Shifting Transaction Isolation on Graphs: From Systems to Data	2025	VLDB
9	2,075	Automating the Detection of Snapshot Isolation Anomalies	2007	VLDB
10	8,878	Efficient Black-box Checking of Snapshot Isolation in Databases	2023	VLDB