METHOD TO GENERATE SEMANTICALLY VALID QUERIES IN THE XQUERY LANGUAGE

• US 20080097974A1
• Filed: 10/18/2006
• Published: 04/24/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: X Corp. (f/k/a Twitter, Inc.) (X Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Pomeroy, Ronald James, Loreto, Anthony Di, Godwin, David Richard, Chen, Wallace W.Y., Cialini, Enzo, Mathew, Ciby
• Granted Patent: US 7,680,782 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3684 for test design, e.g. generating new test cases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/832 Query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation

Abstract

A computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for automatically generating a query. Data and occurrence is described using a sequence type. The data and occurrence from the sequence type are matched to a sequence type pattern. Sentences in a query language are generated automatically using the sequence type pattern for testing an ability of a query processing engine to interpret queries.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for automatically generating a query, the computer implemented method comprising:

describing data and occurrence using a sequence type;

matching the data and the occurrence from the sequence type to a sequence type pattern; and

generating sentences in a query language automatically using the sequence type pattern for testing an ability of a query processing engine to interpret queries.

2. The computer implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

defining a grammar wherein the grammar may use the sequence type pattern to drive sentence generation; and

defining the sequence type pattern wherein the sequence type pattern abstracts a class of query.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 2, further comprising:

producing a plurality of tokens in the grammar automatically wherein the plurality of tokens is consistent with the sequence type pattern; and

translating the plurality of tokens into a syntactically valid query in a target language automatically.

4. The computer implemented method of claim 3, wherein the target language is XQuery.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 3, further comprising:

generating the syntactically valid query automatically based on random or historic queries for testing the query processing engine.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the query is used for testing a database system.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating code for a rule clause.

8. The computer implemented method of claim 7, further comprising:

executing the rule clause to generate a syntax tree, wherein the syntax tree includes intermediate semantic nodes and terminal syntactic nodes and terminal semantic nodes.

9. The computer implemented method of claim 8, comprising:

processing the syntax tree to perform data generation.

10. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the generating step is performed using rule-specification grammar.

11. The computer implemented method of claim 10, further comprising:

translating the rule-specification into a programming language.

12. The computer implemented method of claim 9, wherein the processing step further comprises:

typing the intermediate semantic nodes in leaves in order to generate primary expressions in the query language.

13. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the describing step, matching step, and generating step are performed by a XQuery generator.

14. The computer implemented method of claim 8, wherein the terminal syntactic nodes represent keywords, wherein leaf semantic nodes are primary expressions.

15. A data processing system comprising:

a bus system;

a communications system connected to the bus system;

a memory connected to the bus system, wherein the memory includes a set of instructions for a XQuery code generator; and

a processing unit connected to the bus system, wherein the processing unit executes the set of instructions to describe data and occurrence using a sequence type, match the data and the occurrence from the sequence type to a sequence type pattern, and generate sentences in XQuery language using the sequence type pattern for testing an ability of a query processing engine to interpret queries.

16. The data processing system of claim 15, wherein the sentences are generated randomly for testing features of the query processing engine.

17. The data processing system of claim 15, wherein the set of instructions receives a goal and builds a syntax tree, wherein the syntax tree is processed to generate the sentences.

18. A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium including computer usable program code for automatically generating a query, the computer program product comprising:

computer usable program code for describing data and occurrence using a sequence type;

computer usable program code for matching the data and the occurrence from the sequence type to a sequence type pattern; and

computer usable program code for generating sentences in a query language using the sequence type pattern for testing an ability of a query processing engine to interpret queries.

19. The computer program product of claim 18, further comprising:

computer usable program code for defining a grammar wherein the grammar may use the sequence type pattern to drive sentence generation;

computer usable program code for defining the sequence type pattern wherein the sequence type pattern abstracts a class of query.

20. The computer program product of claim 18, further comprising:

computer usable program code for generating code for a rule clause;

computer usable program code for executing the rule clause to generate a syntax tree; and

computer usable program code for processing the syntax tree to perform data generation.