ClickHouse/docs/en/development/tests.md

---
toc_priority: 69
toc_title: Testing
---

# ClickHouse Testing {#clickhouse-testing}

## Functional Tests {#functional-tests}

Functional tests are the most simple and convenient to use. Most of ClickHouse features can be tested with functional tests and they are mandatory to use for every change in ClickHouse code that can be tested that way.

Each functional test sends one or multiple queries to the running ClickHouse server and compares the result with reference.

Tests are located in `queries` directory. There are two subdirectories: `stateless` and `stateful`. Stateless tests run queries without any preloaded test data - they often create small synthetic datasets on the fly, within the test itself. Stateful tests require preloaded test data from Yandex.Metrica and it is available to general public.

Each test can be one of two types: `.sql` and `.sh`. `.sql` test is the simple SQL script that is piped to `clickhouse-client --multiquery --testmode`. `.sh` test is a script that is run by itself. SQL tests are generally preferable to `.sh` tests. You should use `.sh` tests only when you have to test some feature that cannot be exercised from pure SQL, such as piping some input data into `clickhouse-client` or testing `clickhouse-local`.

### Running a Test Locally {#functional-test-locally}

Start the ClickHouse server locally, listening on the default port (9000). To
run, for example, the test `01428_hash_set_nan_key`, change to the repository
folder and run the following command:

```
PATH=$PATH:<path to clickhouse-client> tests/clickhouse-test 01428_hash_set_nan_key
```

For more options, see `tests/clickhouse-test --help`. You can simply run all tests or run subset of tests filtered by substring in test name: `./clickhouse-test substring`. There are also options to run tests in parallel or in randomized order.

### Adding a New Test

To add new test, create a `.sql` or `.sh` file in `queries/0_stateless` directory, check it manually and then generate `.reference` file in the following way: `clickhouse-client -n --testmode < 00000_test.sql > 00000_test.reference` or `./00000_test.sh > ./00000_test.reference`.

Tests should use (create, drop, etc) only tables in `test` database that is assumed to be created beforehand; also tests can use temporary tables.

### Choosing the Test Name

The name of the test starts with a five-digit prefix followed by a descriptive name, such as `00422_hash_function_constexpr.sql`. To choose the prefix, find the largest prefix already present in the directory, and increment it by one. In the meantime, some other tests might be added with the same numeric prefix, but this is OK and does not lead to any problems, you don't have to change it later.

Some tests are marked with `zookeeper`, `shard` or `long` in their names. `zookeeper` is for tests that are using ZooKeeper. `shard` is for tests that requires server to listen `127.0.0.*`; `distributed` or `global` have the same meaning. `long` is for tests that run slightly longer that one second. You can disable these groups of tests using `--no-zookeeper`, `--no-shard` and `--no-long` options, respectively. Make sure to add a proper prefix to your test name if it needs ZooKeeper or distributed queries.

### Checking for an Error that Must Occur

Sometimes you want to test that a server error occurs for an incorrect query. We support special annotations for this in SQL tests, in the following form:
```
select x; -- { serverError 49 }
```
This test ensures that the server returns an error with code 49 about unknown column `x`. If there is no error, or the error is different, the test will fail. If you want to ensure that an error occurs on the client side, use `clientError` annotation instead.

Do not check for a particular wording of error message, it may change in the future, and the test will needlessly break. Check only the error code. If the existing error code is not precise enough for your needs, consider adding a new one.

### Testing a Distributed Query

If you want to use distributed queries in functional tests, you can leverage `remote` table function with `127.0.0.{1..2}` addresses for the server to query itself; or you can use predefined test clusters in server configuration file like `test_shard_localhost`. Remember to add the words `shard` or `distributed` to the test name, so that it is run in CI in correct configurations, where the server is configured to support distributed queries.


## Known Bugs {#known-bugs}

If we know some bugs that can be easily reproduced by functional tests, we place prepared functional tests in `tests/queries/bugs` directory. These tests will be moved to `tests/queries/0_stateless` when bugs are fixed.

## Integration Tests {#integration-tests}

Integration tests allow testing ClickHouse in clustered configuration and ClickHouse interaction with other servers like MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB. They are useful to emulate network splits, packet drops, etc. These tests are run under Docker and create multiple containers with various software.

See `tests/integration/README.md` on how to run these tests.

Note that integration of ClickHouse with third-party drivers is not tested. Also, we currently do not have integration tests with our JDBC and ODBC drivers.

## Unit Tests {#unit-tests}

Unit tests are useful when you want to test not the ClickHouse as a whole, but a single isolated library or class. You can enable or disable build of tests with `ENABLE_TESTS` CMake option. Unit tests (and other test programs) are located in `tests` subdirectories across the code. To run unit tests, type `ninja test`. Some tests use `gtest`, but some are just programs that return non-zero exit code on test failure.

It’s not necessary to have unit tests if the code is already covered by functional tests (and functional tests are usually much more simple to use).

You can run individual gtest checks by calling the executable directly, for example:

```bash
$ ./src/unit_tests_dbms --gtest_filter=LocalAddress*
```

## Performance Tests {#performance-tests}

Performance tests allow to measure and compare performance of some isolated part of ClickHouse on synthetic queries. Tests are located at `tests/performance`. Each test is represented by `.xml` file with description of test case. Tests are run with `docker/tests/performance-comparison` tool . See the readme file for invocation.

Each test run one or multiple queries (possibly with combinations of parameters) in a loop. Some tests can contain preconditions on preloaded test dataset.

If you want to improve performance of ClickHouse in some scenario, and if improvements can be observed on simple queries, it is highly recommended to write a performance test. It always makes sense to use `perf top` or other perf tools during your tests.

## Test Tools and Scripts {#test-tools-and-scripts}

Some programs in `tests` directory are not prepared tests, but are test tools. For example, for `Lexer` there is a tool `src/Parsers/tests/lexer` that just do tokenization of stdin and writes colorized result to stdout. You can use these kind of tools as a code examples and for exploration and manual testing.

## Miscellaneous Tests {#miscellaneous-tests}

There are tests for machine learned models in `tests/external_models`. These tests are not updated and must be transferred to integration tests.

There is separate test for quorum inserts. This test run ClickHouse cluster on separate servers and emulate various failure cases: network split, packet drop (between ClickHouse nodes, between ClickHouse and ZooKeeper, between ClickHouse server and client, etc.), `kill -9`, `kill -STOP` and `kill -CONT` , like [Jepsen](https://aphyr.com/tags/Jepsen). Then the test checks that all acknowledged inserts was written and all rejected inserts was not.

Quorum test was written by separate team before ClickHouse was open-sourced. This team no longer work with ClickHouse. Test was accidentally written in Java. For these reasons, quorum test must be rewritten and moved to integration tests.

## Manual Testing {#manual-testing}

When you develop a new feature, it is reasonable to also test it manually. You can do it with the following steps:

Build ClickHouse. Run ClickHouse from the terminal: change directory to `programs/clickhouse-server` and run it with `./clickhouse-server`. It will use configuration (`config.xml`, `users.xml` and files within `config.d` and `users.d` directories) from the current directory by default. To connect to ClickHouse server, run `programs/clickhouse-client/clickhouse-client`.

Note that all clickhouse tools (server, client, etc) are just symlinks to a single binary named `clickhouse`. You can find this binary at `programs/clickhouse`. All tools can also be invoked as `clickhouse tool` instead of `clickhouse-tool`.

Alternatively you can install ClickHouse package: either stable release from Yandex repository or you can build package for yourself with `./release` in ClickHouse sources root. Then start the server with `sudo service clickhouse-server start` (or stop to stop the server). Look for logs at `/etc/clickhouse-server/clickhouse-server.log`.

When ClickHouse is already installed on your system, you can build a new `clickhouse` binary and replace the existing binary:

``` bash
$ sudo service clickhouse-server stop
$ sudo cp ./clickhouse /usr/bin/
$ sudo service clickhouse-server start
```

Also you can stop system clickhouse-server and run your own with the same configuration but with logging to terminal:

``` bash
$ sudo service clickhouse-server stop
$ sudo -u clickhouse /usr/bin/clickhouse server --config-file /etc/clickhouse-server/config.xml
```

Example with gdb:

``` bash
$ sudo -u clickhouse gdb --args /usr/bin/clickhouse server --config-file /etc/clickhouse-server/config.xml
```

If the system clickhouse-server is already running and you do not want to stop it, you can change port numbers in your `config.xml` (or override them in a file in `config.d` directory), provide appropriate data path, and run it.

`clickhouse` binary has almost no dependencies and works across wide range of Linux distributions. To quick and dirty test your changes on a server, you can simply `scp` your fresh built `clickhouse` binary to your server and then run it as in examples above.

## Testing Environment {#testing-environment}

Before publishing release as stable we deploy it on testing environment. Testing environment is a cluster that process 1/39 part of [Yandex.Metrica](https://metrica.yandex.com/) data. We share our testing environment with Yandex.Metrica team. ClickHouse is upgraded without downtime on top of existing data. We look at first that data is processed successfully without lagging from realtime, the replication continue to work and there is no issues visible to Yandex.Metrica team. First check can be done in the following way:

``` sql
SELECT hostName() AS h, any(version()), any(uptime()), max(UTCEventTime), count() FROM remote('example01-01-{1..3}t', merge, hits) WHERE EventDate >= today() - 2 GROUP BY h ORDER BY h;
```

In some cases we also deploy to testing environment of our friend teams in Yandex: Market, Cloud, etc. Also we have some hardware servers that are used for development purposes.

## Load Testing {#load-testing}

After deploying to testing environment we run load testing with queries from production cluster. This is done manually.

Make sure you have enabled `query_log` on your production cluster.

Collect query log for a day or more:

``` bash
$ clickhouse-client --query="SELECT DISTINCT query FROM system.query_log WHERE event_date = today() AND query LIKE '%ym:%' AND query NOT LIKE '%system.query_log%' AND type = 2 AND is_initial_query" > queries.tsv
```

This is a way complicated example. `type = 2` will filter queries that are executed successfully. `query LIKE '%ym:%'` is to select relevant queries from Yandex.Metrica. `is_initial_query` is to select only queries that are initiated by client, not by ClickHouse itself (as parts of distributed query processing).

`scp` this log to your testing cluster and run it as following:

``` bash
$ clickhouse benchmark --concurrency 16 < queries.tsv
```

(probably you also want to specify a `--user`)

Then leave it for a night or weekend and go take a rest.

You should check that `clickhouse-server` does not crash, memory footprint is bounded and performance not degrading over time.

Precise query execution timings are not recorded and not compared due to high variability of queries and environment.

## Build Tests {#build-tests}

Build tests allow to check that build is not broken on various alternative configurations and on some foreign systems. These tests are automated as well.

Examples:
-   cross-compile for Darwin x86_64 (Mac OS X)
-   cross-compile for FreeBSD x86_64
-   cross-compile for Linux AArch64
-   build on Ubuntu with libraries from system packages (discouraged)
-   build with shared linking of libraries (discouraged)

For example, build with system packages is bad practice, because we cannot guarantee what exact version of packages a system will have. But this is really needed by Debian maintainers. For this reason we at least have to support this variant of build. Another example: shared linking is a common source of trouble, but it is needed for some enthusiasts.

Though we cannot run all tests on all variant of builds, we want to check at least that various build variants are not broken. For this purpose we use build tests.

We also test that there are no translation units that are too long to compile or require too much RAM.

We also test that there are no too large stack frames.

## Testing for Protocol Compatibility {#testing-for-protocol-compatibility}

When we extend ClickHouse network protocol, we test manually that old clickhouse-client works with new clickhouse-server and new clickhouse-client works with old clickhouse-server (simply by running binaries from corresponding packages).

We also test some cases automatically with integrational tests:
- if data written by old version of ClickHouse can be successfully read by the new version;
- do distributed queries work in a cluster with different ClickHouse versions.

## Help from the Compiler {#help-from-the-compiler}

Main ClickHouse code (that is located in `dbms` directory) is built with `-Wall -Wextra -Werror` and with some additional enabled warnings. Although these options are not enabled for third-party libraries.

Clang has even more useful warnings - you can look for them with `-Weverything` and pick something to default build.

For production builds, clang is used, but we also test make gcc builds. For development, clang is usually more convenient to use. You can build on your own machine with debug mode (to save battery of your laptop), but please note that compiler is able to generate more warnings with `-O3` due to better control flow and inter-procedure analysis. When building with clang in debug mode, debug version of `libc++` is used that allows to catch more errors at runtime.

## Sanitizers {#sanitizers}

### Address sanitizer
We run functional, integration, stress and unit tests under ASan on per-commit basis.

### Thread sanitizer
We run functional, integration, stress and unit tests under TSan on per-commit basis.

### Memory sanitizer
We run functional, integration, stress and unit tests under MSan on per-commit basis.

### Undefined behaviour sanitizer
We run functional, integration, stress and unit tests under UBSan on per-commit basis. The code of some third-party libraries is not sanitized for UB.

### Valgrind (Memcheck)
We used to run functional tests under Valgrind overnight, but don't do it anymore. It takes multiple hours. Currently there is one known false positive in `re2` library, see [this article](https://research.swtch.com/sparse).

## Fuzzing {#fuzzing}

ClickHouse fuzzing is implemented both using [libFuzzer](https://llvm.org/docs/LibFuzzer.html) and random SQL queries.
All the fuzz testing should be performed with sanitizers (Address and Undefined).

LibFuzzer is used for isolated fuzz testing of library code. Fuzzers are implemented as part of test code and have “_fuzzer” name postfixes.
Fuzzer example can be found at `src/Parsers/tests/lexer_fuzzer.cpp`. LibFuzzer-specific configs, dictionaries and corpus are stored at `tests/fuzz`.
We encourage you to write fuzz tests for every functionality that handles user input.

Fuzzers are not built by default. To build fuzzers both `-DENABLE_FUZZING=1` and `-DENABLE_TESTS=1` options should be set.
We recommend to disable Jemalloc while building fuzzers. Configuration used to integrate ClickHouse fuzzing to
Google OSS-Fuzz can be found at `docker/fuzz`.

We also use simple fuzz test to generate random SQL queries and to check that the server does not die executing them.
You can find it in `00746_sql_fuzzy.pl`. This test should be run continuously (overnight and longer).

We also use sophisticated AST-based query fuzzer that is able to find huge amount of corner cases. It does random permutations and substitutions in queries AST. It remembers AST nodes from previous tests to use them for fuzzing of subsequent tests while processing them in random order. You can learn more about this fuzzer in [this blog article](https://clickhouse.tech/blog/en/2021/fuzzing-clickhouse/).

## Stress test

Stress tests are another case of fuzzing. It runs all functional tests in parallel in random order with a single server. Results of the tests are not checked.

It is checked that:
- server does not crash, no debug or sanitizer traps are triggered;
- there are no deadlocks;
- the database structure is consistent;
- server can successfully stop after the test and start again without exceptions.

There are five variants (Debug, ASan, TSan, MSan, UBSan).

## Thread Fuzzer

Thread Fuzzer (please don't mix up with Thread Sanitizer) is another kind of fuzzing that allows to randomize thread order of execution. It helps to find even more special cases.

## Security Audit {#security-audit}

People from Yandex Security Team do some basic overview of ClickHouse capabilities from the security standpoint.

## Static Analyzers {#static-analyzers}

We run `clang-tidy` and `PVS-Studio` on per-commit basis. `clang-static-analyzer` checks are also enabled. `clang-tidy` is also used for some style checks.

We have evaluated `clang-tidy`, `Coverity`, `cppcheck`, `PVS-Studio`, `tscancode`, `CodeQL`. You will find instructions for usage in `tests/instructions/` directory. Also you can read [the article in russian](https://habr.com/company/yandex/blog/342018/).

If you use `CLion` as an IDE, you can leverage some `clang-tidy` checks out of the box.

We also use `shellcheck` for static analysis of shell scripts.

## Hardening {#hardening}

In debug build we are using custom allocator that does ASLR of user-level allocations.

We also manually protect memory regions that are expected to be readonly after allocation.

In debug build we also involve a customization of libc that ensures that no "harmful" (obsolete, insecure, not thread-safe) functions are called.

Debug assertions are used extensively.

In debug build, if exception with "logical error" code (implies a bug) is being thrown, the program is terminated prematurally. It allows to use exceptions in release build but make it an assertion in debug build.

Debug version of jemalloc is used for debug builds.
Debug version of libc++ is used for debug builds.

## Runtime Integrity Checks

Data stored on disk is checksummed. Data in MergeTree tables is checksummed in three ways simultaneously* (compressed data blocks, uncompressed data blocks, the total checksum across blocks). Data transferred over network between client and server or between servers is also checksummed. Replication ensures bit-identical data on replicas.

It is required to protect from faulty hardware (bit rot on storage media, bit flips in RAM on server, bit flips in RAM of network controller, bit flips in RAM of network switch, bit flips in RAM of client, bit flips on the wire). Note that bit flips are common and likely to occur even for ECC RAM and in presense of TCP checksums (if you manage to run thousands of servers processing petabytes of data each day). [See the video (russian)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooBAQIe0KlQ).

ClickHouse provides diagnostics that will help ops engineers to find faulty hardware.

\* and it is not slow.

## Code Style {#code-style}

Code style rules are described [here](style.md).

To check for some common style violations, you can use `utils/check-style` script.

To force proper style of your code, you can use `clang-format`. File `.clang-format` is located at the sources root. It mostly corresponding with our actual code style. But it’s not recommended to apply `clang-format` to existing files because it makes formatting worse. You can use `clang-format-diff` tool that you can find in clang source repository.

Alternatively you can try `uncrustify` tool to reformat your code. Configuration is in `uncrustify.cfg` in the sources root. It is less tested than `clang-format`.

`CLion` has its own code formatter that has to be tuned for our code style.

We also use `codespell` to find typos in code. It is automated as well.

## Metrica B2B Tests {#metrica-b2b-tests}

Each ClickHouse release is tested with Yandex Metrica and AppMetrica engines. Testing and stable versions of ClickHouse are deployed on VMs and run with a small copy of Metrica engine that is processing fixed sample of input data. Then results of two instances of Metrica engine are compared together.

These tests are automated by separate team. Due to high number of moving parts, tests are fail most of the time by completely unrelated reasons, that are very difficult to figure out. Most likely these tests have negative value for us. Nevertheless these tests was proved to be useful in about one or two times out of hundreds.

## Test Coverage {#test-coverage}

We also track test coverage but only for functional tests and only for clickhouse-server. It is performed on daily basis.

## Tests for Tests

There is automated check for flaky tests. It runs all new tests 100 times (for functional tests) or 10 times (for integration tests). If at least single time the test failed, it is considered flaky.

## Testflows

[Testflows](https://testflows.com/) is an enterprise-grade testing framework. It is used by Altinity for some of the tests and we run these tests in our CI.

## Yandex Checks (only for Yandex employees)

These checks are importing ClickHouse code into Yandex internal monorepository, so ClickHouse codebase can be used as a library by other products at Yandex (YT and YDB). Note that clickhouse-server itself is not being build from internal repo and unmodified open-source build is used for Yandex applications.

## Test Automation {#test-automation}

We run tests with Yandex internal CI and job automation system named “Sandbox”.

Build jobs and tests are run in Sandbox on per commit basis. Resulting packages and test results are published in GitHub and can be downloaded by direct links. Artifacts are stored for several months. When you send a pull request on GitHub, we tag it as “can be tested” and our CI system will build ClickHouse packages (release, debug, with address sanitizer, etc) for you.

We do not use Travis CI due to the limit on time and computational power.
We do not use Jenkins. It was used before and now we are happy we are not using Jenkins.

[Original article](https://clickhouse.tech/docs/en/development/tests/) <!--hide-->