Summarizing Large Query Logs in Ettu [article]

Gokhan Kul, Duc Luong, Ting Xie, Patrick Coonan, Varun Chandola, Oliver Kennedy, Shambhu Upadhyaya
2016 arXiv   pre-print
Database access logs are large, unwieldy, and hard for humans to inspect and summarize. In spite of this, they remain the canonical go-to resource for tasks ranging from performance tuning to security auditing. In this paper, we address the challenge of compactly encoding large sequences of SQL queries for presentation to a human user. Our approach is based on the Weisfeiler-Lehman (WL) approximate graph isomorphism algorithm, which identifies salient features of a graph or in our case of an
more » ... tract syntax tree. Our generalization of WL allows us to define a distance metric for SQL queries, which in turn permits automated clustering of queries. We also present two techniques for visualizing query clusters, and an algorithm that allows these visualizations to be constructed at interactive speeds. Finally, we evaluate our algorithms in the context of a motivating example: insider threat detection at a large US bank. We show experimentally on real world query logs that (a) our distance metric captures a meaningful notion of similarity, and (b) the log summarization process is scalable and performant.
arXiv:1608.01013v1 fatcat:pepyrmjspfghfdxas4eujfxoim