codeql/docs/prepare-db-upgrade.md

Upgrading a language database schema

When a .dbscheme file changes, you need to provide two things:

1. An upgrade script that modifies old databases (built against an earlier schema), so they can use new query functionality (albeit with possibly degraded results).
2. A downgrade script that reverses those changes, so that newer databases can be queried using older query and library packs.

This document explains how to write or generate those scripts.

Process Overview

1. Commit the change to your language's .dbscheme file, along with any library updates required to work with the change.
2. Run misc/scripts/prepare-db-upgrade.sh --lang <lang>. This will generate skeleton upgrade/downgrade scripts in the appropriate directories.
3. Fill in the details in the two upgrade.properties files that it generated, and add any required upgrade queries.

It may be helpful to look at some of the existing upgrade/downgrade scripts, to see how they work.

Details

An upgrade.properties file will look something like:

description: what it does
compatibility: partial
some_relation.rel: run some_relation.qlo

The description field is a textual description of the aim of the upgrade.

The compatibility field takes one of four values:

• full: results from the upgraded snapshot will be identical to results from a snapshot built with the new version of the toolchain.

• backwards: the step is safe and preserves the meaning of the old database, but new features may not work correctly on the upgraded snapshot.

• partial: the step is safe and preserves the meaning of the old database, but you would get better results if you rebuilt the snapshot with the new version of the toolchain.

• breaking: the step is unsafe and will prevent certain queries from working.

The some_relation.rel line(s) are the actions required to perform the database upgrade. Do a diff on the new vs old .dbscheme file to get an idea of what they have to achieve. Sometimes you won't need any upgrade commands – this happens when the dbscheme has changed in "cosmetic" ways, for example by adding/removing comments or changing union type relationships, but still retains the same on-disk format for all tables; the purpose of the upgrade script is then to document the fact that it's safe to replace the old dbscheme with the new one.

Ideally, your downgrade script will perfectly revert the changes applied by the upgrade script, such that applying the upgrade and then the downgrade will result in the same database you started with.

Some typical upgrade commands look like this:

// Delete a relation that has been replaced in the new scheme
obsolete.rel: delete

// Create a new version of a table by applying an expression (using a simple
// synthetic language) to an existing table. The example duplicates the 'id'
// column of input.rel as the last column of extended.rel, perhaps to record our
// best guess at newly-populated "source declaration" information.
extended.rel: reorder input.rel (int id, string name, int parent) id name parent id

// Create relationname.rel by running relationname.qlo and writing the query
// results as a .rel file. The query file should be named relationname.ql and
// should be placed in the upgrade directory. It should avoid using the default
// QLL library, and will run in the context of the *old* dbscheme.
relationname.rel: run relationname.qlo

// Create relation1.rel by running the query predicate 'predicate1' in upgrade.qlo
// and writing the query results as a .rel file, and running 'predicate2' in
// upgrade.qlo and writing the query results as a .rel file. This command
// expects the upgrade relation to be a query predicate, which has the advantage
// of allowing multiple upgrade relations to appear in the same .ql file as
// multiple query predicates. The query file should be named upgrade.ql and
// should be placed in the upgrade directory. It should avoid using the default
// QLL library, and will run in the context of the *old* dbscheme.
relation1.rel: run upgrade.qlo predicate1
relation2.rel: run upgrade.qlo predicate2

Testing your scripts

Although we have some automated testing of the scripts (e.g. to test that you can upgrade databases all the way from an initial dbscheme to the newest, and back), it's essential that you apply some more rigorous testing for any non-trivial upgrade or downgrade. You might do so as follows:

Running qltests

To test the upgrade script, run:

codeql test run --search-path=<old-extractor-pack> --search-path=<codeql-root> <test-dir>

Where <old-extractor-pack> is an extractor pack containing the old extractor and dbscheme that pre-date your changes, <test-dir> is the directory containing the qltests for your language, and <codeql-root> is the root directory directory of the github/codeql clone that contains <test-dir>. This will run the tests using an old extractor, and the test databases will all be upgraded in place using your new upgrade script.

To test the downgrade script, create an extractor pack that includes your new dbscheme and extractor changes. Then checkout the main branch of codeql (i.e. a branch that does not include your changes), and run:

codeql test run --search-path=<new-extractor-pack> <test-dir>

This will run the tests using your new extractor, and the databases will be downgraded using your new downgrade script so that they match the dbscheme of the main branch.

Manual testing

You might also choose to test with a real-world database.

1. Create a snapshot of your favourite project using the old version of the code.

2. Switch to the new version of the code.

3. Try to run some queries that will depend on your upgrade script working correctly.

4. Observe the upgrade being performed in the query server log.

5. Verify that your queries produced sensible results.

Doing the upgrade manually

To create the upgrade directory manually, without using prepare-db-upgrade.sh:

1. Get a hash of the old .dbscheme file from main (i.e. from just before your changes). You can do this by checking out the code prior to your changes and running git hash-object ql/lib/<mylang>.dbscheme

2. Go back to your branch and create an upgrade directory with that hash as its name, for example:

mkdir ql/lib/upgrades/454f1e15151422355049dc4f1f0486a03baeffef

3. Copy the old .dbscheme file to that directory, using the name old.dbscheme.

cp ql/lib/<mylang>.dbscheme ql/lib/upgrades/454f1e15151422355049dc4f1f0486a03baeffef/old.dbscheme

4. Put a copy of your new .dbscheme file in that directory and create an upgrade.properties file (as described above).

Doing the downgrade manually

The process is similar for downgrade scripts, but there is a reversal in terminology: your new dbscheme will now be the one called old.dbscheme.

1. Get a hash of your new .dbscheme file, with git hash-object ql/lib/<mylang>.dbscheme

2. Create a downgrade directory with that hash as its name, for example:

mkdir downgrades/9fdd1d40fd3c3f8f9db8fabf5a353580d14c663a

3. Copy your new .dbscheme file to that directory, using the name old.dbscheme.

cp ql/lib/<mylang>.dbscheme ql/lib/upgrades/454f1e15151422355049dc4f1f0486a03baeffef/old.dbscheme

4. Put a copy of the .dbscheme from main in that directory and create an upgrade.properties file that performs the downgrade (as described above).

Debugging your scripts

Database upgrade/downgrade may fail for several reasons. To find out the exact issue it is recommended to rerun the codeql test run commands from above in a verbose mode, e.g. codeql test run -vvvv ....