Keep It Simple: Testing Databases via Differential Query Plans

Summary: Proposes Differential Query Plan (DQP) testing: force multiple physical plans for the same query and check result consistency, instead of TQS-style table splitting/oracle synthesis. Surprisingly simple yet strong: reproduces 14/15 TQS bugs, finds 26 new ones, and is complementary to NoREC/TLP. (summarized by gpt-5.4-mini on May 24 2026)

Paper ID: h97c60b233d00f0af
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2024
Pagerank: 7.1150097e-05
Overall Rank: 3,652 | 75.53%
DOI: 10.1145/3654991
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Jinsheng Ba (National University of Singapore)
2. Manuel Rigger (National University of Singapore)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{ba_sigmod24,
        title = {{Keep It Simple: Testing Databases via Differential Query Plans}},
        author = {Ba, Jinsheng and Rigger, Manuel},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '24},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/3654991},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3654991},
        year = {2024}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 14 of 14 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
4,748	Detecting Metadata-Related Logic Bugs in Database Systems via Raw Database Construction	2024	VLDB	6.4257176e-05
8,426	Detecting Schema-Related Logic Bugs in Relational DBMSs via Equivalent Database Construction	2025	VLDB	5.3187835e-05
8,662	PBench: Workload Synthesizer with Real Statistics for Cloud Analytics Benchmarking	2025	VLDB	5.2781431e-05
9,252	EPSC: Testing Database Management Systems via Equivalent Prepared Statement Construction	2026	SIGMOD	5.1860131e-05
9,255	SRS: Detecting Logic Bugs of Join Implementation in DBMSs via Set Relation Synthesis	2026	SIGMOD	5.1860131e-05
10,093	Finding Logic Bugs in Graph-processing Systems via Graph-cutting	2025	SIGMOD	5.068372e-05
10,098	Simple Testing Can Expose Most Critical Transaction Bugs: Understanding and Detecting Write-Specific Serializability Violations in Database Systems	2025	VLDB	5.068372e-05
10,382	Automated Database Testing via LLM-Synthesized SQL Features	2027	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
10,493	Automated Discovery of Test Oracles for Database Management Systems Using LLMs	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
10,510	DBugScribe: Automatic Database Bug Reproduction from Community Reports	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
10,512	Detecting Join Bugs in Database Engines via Join Implication Reasoning	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
10,612	Testing Graph Databases with Synthesized Queries	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
10,736	One DBMS, Two Modes, and a Bunch of Bugs: Catching Logic Bugs in Distributed DBMSs via Differential Testing	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
10,942	Detecting Data-Type-Related Logic Bugs in Relational DBMSs via Compatible Database Construction	2026	VLDB	4.9605343e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 15 of 15 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1	Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System	1979	SIGMOD	0.0023948467
106	Quickly Generating Billion-Record Synthetic Databases	1994	SIGMOD	0.00033563032
186	CockroachDB: The Resilient Geo-Distributed SQL Database	2020	SIGMOD	0.00026001543
751	QAGen: Generating Query-Aware Test Databases	2007	SIGMOD	0.00014245413
1,381	Execution Strategies for SQL Subqueries	2007	SIGMOD	0.00010832197
1,765	APOLLO: Automatic Detection and Diagnosis of Performance Regressions in Database Systems	2020	VLDB	9.689153e-05
1,854	Detecting Logic Bugs of Join Optimizations in DBMS	2023	SIGMOD	9.4858897e-05
1,901	Generating Targeted Queries for Database Testing	2008	SIGMOD	9.3902763e-05
2,261	Counter Strike: Generic Top-Down Join Enumeration for Hypergraphs	2013	VLDB	8.7351549e-05
2,719	Generating Thousand Benchmark Queries in Seconds	2004	VLDB	8.0785428e-05
3,807	Query Simplification: Graceful Degradation for Join-Order Optimization	2009	SIGMOD	6.9902343e-05
4,127	A genetic approach for random testing of database systems	2007	VLDB	6.7775018e-05
7,495	PgCuckoo: Laying Plan Eggs in PostgreSQL's Nest	2019	SIGMOD	5.4972537e-05
8,640	A Demonstration of DLBD: Database Logic Bug Detection System	2023	VLDB	5.2825387e-05
9,385	Automatic SQL Error Mitigation in Oracle	2023	VLDB	5.1697992e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	8,426	Detecting Schema-Related Logic Bugs in Relational DBMSs via Equivalent Database Construction	2025	VLDB
2	4,055	Counting, Enumerating, and Sampling of Execution Plans in a Cost-Based Query Optimizer	2000	SIGMOD
3	6,118	Constant Optimization Driven Database System Testing	2025	SIGMOD
4	5,261	Test Data for Relational Queries (Extended abstract)	1986	PODS
5	12,835	A Framework for Testing Query Transformation Rules	2009	SIGMOD
6	9,255	SRS: Detecting Logic Bugs of Join Implementation in DBMSs via Set Relation Synthesis	2026	SIGMOD
7	7,658	Test Data Generation for Complex SQL Queries	2026	SIGMOD
8	1,901	Generating Targeted Queries for Database Testing	2008	SIGMOD
9	10,612	Testing Graph Databases with Synthesized Queries	2026	SIGMOD
10	1,854	Detecting Logic Bugs of Join Optimizations in DBMS	2023	SIGMOD