Fawkes: Finding Data Durability Bugs in DBMSs via Recovered Data State Verification
Read the paper · doi:10.1145/3731569.3764841
What this paper does with SQLancer
SQLancer is cited as the established means of detecting SQL correctness bugs through metamorphic testing -- the class of testing Fawkes distinguishes itself from, since durability bugs survive any query-level oracle.
Fawkes studies and detects data durability bugs, where committed data does not survive faults such as power failures. The authors examine 43 such bugs across four DBMSs, finding they surface as data loss, inconsistency, log corruption or unavailability, usually stem from flawed durability and recovery mechanisms, and are triggered by faults during filesystem or kernel operations. Fawkes combines context-aware fault injection, functionality-guided triggering and checkpoint-based data graph verification, finding 48 previously unknown durability bugs.
How it was classified
uses infrastructure — no
SQLancer is cited, not used; nothing in the mentions describes reusing its code.
extends technique — no
No technique is extended; the citation is background.
compares with — no
No empirical comparison against SQLancer is reported in the mentions.
describes as state of the art — no
The citation does not characterise SQLancer as the state of the art.
SQLancer publications it cites (7)
Bibliography entries that resolved to a SQLancer publication, or to a paper by one of the project's authors. A sentence citing one of these numbers is a reference to SQLancer even when it never writes the name.
| # | Entry | Matched as |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Ba, J., and Rigger, M. Keep it simple: Testing databases via differential query plans. Proceedings of the ACM on Management of Data 2, 3 (2024), 1–26. | sqlancer publication · DQP |
| 20 | Fu, J., Liang, J., Wu, Z., Zhao, Y., Li, S., and Jiang, Y. Understanding and detecting sql function bugs: Using simple boundary arguments to trigger hundreds of dbms bugs. In Proceedings of the Twentieth European Conf... | project authored |
| 26 | Jiang, Z.-M., Liu, S., Rigger, M., and Su, Z. Detecting transactional bugs in database engines via {graph-based}oracle 682 SOSP ’25, October 13–16, 2025, Seoul, Republic of Korea Zhiyong Wu, Jie Liang*, Jingzhou Fu, W... | project authored |
| 47 | Rigger, M., and Su, Z. Detecting optimization bugs in database engines via non-optimizing reference engine construction. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Sym... | sqlancer publication · NOREC |
| 48 | Rigger, M., and Su, Z. Finding bugs in database systems via query partitioning. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages 4, OOPSLA (2020), 1–30. | sqlancer publication · TLP |
| 49 | Rigger, M., and Su, Z. Testing database engines via pivoted query synthesis. In 14th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation OSDI 20) (2020), pp. 667– 682. | sqlancer publication · PQS |
| 60 | Zhang, C., and Rigger, M. Constant optimization driven database system testing. Proceedings of the ACM on Management of Data 3, 1 (2025), 1–24. | sqlancer publication · CODDTEST |
Every place it refers to SQLancer (4)
4 sentences, each stored verbatim from the extracted text with where it was found and how. “Citation marker” means the sentence names no tool at all and was reached through a reference number that resolved to a SQLancer publication.
| Id | Sentence | Found by | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | , SQLancer [47]) to detect SQL correctness bugs. |
name |
page 12 |
| M2 | , crash, logic bug, and performance bug) [ 49,63,58,29,30,55,57,56,20,48]. |
citation marker |
page 12 |
| M3 | For logic bug detection, SQLancer[ 49] adopts a metamorphic testing approach[ 47,48,11,60] to detect logical errors in DBMS. |
name |
page 12 |
| M4 | TxCheck [ 26] constructs semantically equivalent test cases based on fine-grained statement-level dependencies in transactions to detect isolation bugs in DBMS. |
citation marker project authored |
page 12 |