CODD Metadata Processor

Design and testing of database engines and applications requires to construct and evaluate various alternative scenarios with respect to the database contents. To construct a scenario, existing methodology consumes space and time at least proportional to database size. This may limit the desired scenarios and/or make it infeasible to model them. In this work, we present CODD, a graphical tool that alleviates the time and space constraints through the construction of “dataless databases”. Specifically, CODD implements a unified visual interface through which databases with the desired metadata characteristics can be efficiently simulated without the explicit presence of data. Input metadata values are validated to ensure that the simulated database is both legal and consistent. Additionally CODD provides two other features, which is relevant to database test teams. First, it provides automated metadata transfer across database engines to facilitate comparative study of systems. Second, it supports space and time based metadata scaling. CODD is currently operational on a rich suite of popular database engines. We present here the ability of CODD to construct alternative scenarios and its various features.