HISTEX (HISTory EXerciser) : A tool for testing the implementation of Isolation Levels of Relational Database Management Systems

TL;DR

HISTEX is a versatile tool designed to test and analyze the implementation of isolation levels in relational database systems, helping identify errors and measure performance in real-world scenarios.

Contribution

Introduces HISTEX, a multi-process application for testing isolation levels and performance in commercial DBMSs, with adaptable implementation ideas for various connectivity paradigms.

Findings

Detects potential errors in isolation level implementations

Measures database workload performance on real systems

Encourages further research in database testing tools

Abstract

We present a multi-process application called HISTEX (HISTory EXerciser), which executes input histories in a generic transactional notation on commercial DBMS platforms. HISTEX could be used to discover potential errors in the implementation of Isolation Levels by Relational Database Management Systems or cases where a system behaves over restrictively. It can also be used for performance measurements related to database workloads executing on real database systems instead of simulated environments. HISTEX has been implemented in C by utilizing Embedded SQL. However, many of its ideas could be reincarnated in new implementations that could rely on other database connectivity paradigms such as JDBC, JPA etc. We expect that by presenting some of the ideas behind its development we could re-invigorate some fresh interest and involvement in the research community regarding such tools.