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: 0.00011999358
Overall Rank: 1,102 | 92.60%
DOI: 10.14778/3430915.3430918
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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
1,742	TranAD: Deep Transformer Networks for Anomaly Detection in Multivariate Time Series Data	2022	VLDB	9.7393078e-05
5,058	Detecting Metadata-Related Logic Bugs in Database Systems via Raw Database Construction	2024	VLDB	6.2915045e-05
7,484	Developer’s Responsibility or Database’s Responsibility? Rethinking Concurrency Control in Databases	2023	CIDR	5.5122541e-05
7,573	Database Isolation By Scheduling	2021	VLDB	5.4924612e-05
7,804	Litmus: Towards a Practical Database Management System with Verifiable ACID Properties and Transaction Correctness	2022	SIGMOD	5.4486044e-05
7,833	TDSQL: Tencent Distributed Database System	2024	VLDB	5.441313e-05
8,405	TOD: GPU-accelerated Outlier Detection via Tensor Operations	2023	VLDB	5.3370629e-05
8,589	ScalarDB: Universal Transaction Manager for Polystores	2023	VLDB	5.3070444e-05
8,887	Efficient Black-box Checking of Snapshot Isolation in Databases	2023	VLDB	5.2545859e-05
9,246	DoppelGanger++: Towards Fast Dependency Graph Generation for Database Replay	2024	SIGMOD	5.2032182e-05
9,412	Detecting Schema-Related Logic Bugs in Relational DBMSs via Equivalent Database Construction	2025	VLDB	5.1808981e-05
9,797	TiQuE: Improving the Transactional Performance of Analytical Systems for True Hybrid Workloads	2023	VLDB	5.1235001e-05
10,065	Simple Testing Can Expose Most Critical Transaction Bugs: Understanding and Detecting Write-Specific Serializability Violations in Database Systems	2025	VLDB	5.0851868e-05
10,066	Finding Logic Bugs in Spatial Database Engines via Affine Equivalent Inputs	2024	SIGMOD	5.0851868e-05
10,078	VeriTxn: Verifiable Transactions for Cloud-Native Databases with Storage Disaggregation	2023	SIGMOD	5.0832708e-05
10,446	Detecting Join Bugs in Database Engines via Join Implication Reasoning	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
10,547	Testing Graph Databases with Synthesized Queries	2026	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
10,731	Pisco: An Isolation Bug Case Reduction and Deduplication Framework	2026	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,053	Fast Verification of Strong Database Isolation	2026	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,143	TXSQL: Lock Optimizations Towards High Contented Workloads	2025	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
11,236	VerIso: Verifiable Isolation Guarantees for Database Transactions	2025	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,384	Design and Modular Verification of Distributed Transactions in MongoDB	2025	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,469	Leopard: A General Test Suite for Isolation Level Verification	2024	CIDR	4.9769913e-05
11,553	Understanding and Reusing Test Suites Across Database Systems	2024	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05
11,636	IsoVista: Black-box Checking Database Isolation Guarantees	2024	VLDB	4.9769913e-05
11,693	Allocating Isolation Levels to Transactions in a Multiversion Setting	2023	PODS	4.9769913e-05
11,919	IsoBugView: Interactively Debugging Isolation Bugs in Database Applications	2022	VLDB	4.9769913e-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	0.00040454492
237	Serializable Isolation for Snapshot Databases	2008	SIGMOD	0.00023652724
777	Lazy Database Replication with Snapshot Isolation	2006	VLDB	0.00014075407
2,691	Allocating Isolation Levels to Transactions	2005	PODS	8.1213204e-05

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1	10,141	Deciding Robustness for Lower SQL Isolation Levels	2020	PODS
2	10,077	RushMon: Real-time Isolation Anomalies Monitoring	2018	SIGMOD
3	11,469	Leopard: A General Test Suite for Isolation Level Verification	2024	CIDR
4	5,080	DBPA: A Benchmark for Transactional Database Performance Anomalies	2023	SIGMOD
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