Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Verifying the serializability of transaction histories is essential for assessing whether a database management system (DBMS) correctly enforces the claimed serializable isolation level. Black-box serializability verification provides a practical means for such a validation without relying on internal system details. Existing approaches often suffer from limitations, including incomplete anomaly detection, high verification overhead, excessive memory consumption, or dependence on specific concurrency control protocols. This paper presents Vbox, a black-box serializability verification method that incorporates support for predicate database operations, systematic use of transaction timing information, and a satisfiability (SAT)-based formulation with an efficient solver. Both theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation show that Vbox is correct and efficient, detects a wider range of data anomalies, and does not rely on any particular concurrency control protocol.
DOI: 10.1145/3832190
Authors: Weihua Sun, Zhaonian Zou
Institution: Harbin Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Award: G735871827
OpenAlex ID: W6891998306
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