METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR TESTING DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

A test generator produces a set of database query-language statements comprised of randomly chosen elements for testing one or more database management systems on arbitrary databases. The statements are syntactically correct according to the query language, and are semantically correct according to the query language and according to the schema of the target database. A configuration file further specifies parameters of the test statements, in terms of maximum elements, weights of different elements, etc. The generator carries choices for previous nodes along as it constructs further nodes in the parse tree of each statement. When an error occurs during the execution of a statement on the DBMS, the statement is simplified to produce a shorter statement that still produces the same error, as a debugging aid.