Ultraverse: A System-Centric Framework for Efficient What-If Analysis for Database-Intensive Web Applications

TL;DR

Ultraverse is a novel framework that integrates application and database layers for efficient what-if analysis, using dynamic symbolic execution and advanced query dependency analysis to significantly speed up analysis in web applications.

Contribution

Ultraverse introduces a system-centric approach combining application and database analysis with innovative techniques for faster, more accurate what-if scenario evaluation.

Findings

Achieves 7.7x to 291x speedup in analysis performance.

Effectively handles existing unmodified systems and legacy code.

Utilizes dynamic symbolic execution and query dependency analysis for efficiency.

Abstract

Existing what-if analysis systems are predominantly tailored to operate on either only the application layer or only the database layer of software. This isolated approach limits their effectiveness in scenarios where intensive interaction between applications and database systems occurs. To address this gap, we introduce Ultraverse, a what-if analysis framework that seamlessly integrates both application and database layers. Ultraverse employs dynamic symbolic execution to effectively translate application code into compact SQL procedure representations, thereby synchronizing application semantics at both SQL and application levels during what-if replays. A novel aspect of Ultraverse is its use of advanced query dependency analysis, which serves two key purposes: (1) it eliminates the need to replay irrelevant transactions that do not influence the outcome, and (2) it facilitates parallel replay of mutually independent transactions, significantly enhancing the analysis efficiency. Ultraverse is applicable to existing unmodified database systems and legacy application codes. Our extensive evaluations of the framework have demonstrated remarkable improvements in what-if analysis speed, achieving performance gains ranging from 7.7x to 291x across diverse benchmarks.