Until now ISqlDialect.QuoteIdentifier was the SOLE defence for authored
table/column names: an identifier went from the TagConfig blob straight into a
command text, bracket-quoted. The residual risk was bounded — a hostile name is
quoted into one nonexistent object, the query fails after the connection opens,
and the tag Bad-codes — but "bounded" is not "filtered", and the design promised
a filter. Both ISqlDialect and SqlServerDialect carried a doc paragraph saying so.
SqlCatalogGate + SqlCatalogLoader now resolve every authored identifier against
the live catalog at Initialize, and REPLACE it with the catalog's own spelling.
The identifier text in an emitted poll query is therefore a string this driver
read back out of ListSchemas/ListTables/ListColumns — not operator input. Quoting
becomes the backstop it was documented to be.
Decisions worth knowing before touching this:
- Substitution, not just validation. Matching is exact-ordinal first, then a
UNIQUE case-insensitive hit: SQL Server's default collation is CI so case
variants have always worked, and rejecting them would break valid deployments.
An ambiguous CI match under a case-sensitive collation is refused rather than
guessed — picking one would publish another column's data under the operator's
node, which is worse than rejecting the tag.
- Charset check BEFORE catalog lookup. Each identifier goes through
QuoteIdentifier for its rejection rules first, so a name carrying a control or
Unicode format character is rejected WITHOUT its value being echoed into a log
line (Trojan-Source). A name that passes is safe to render, which is why
catalog-miss messages do name it — an operator hunting a typo has to see what
they wrote. Both halves are pinned by tests.
- A rejected tag keeps its node. It is dropped from the POLLED table but stays in
the AUTHORED table, so it still materializes and reads BadNodeIdUnknown —
§8.1's specified outcome. My first wiring dropped it from both, which deleted
the node instead; an existing test (ReinitializeAsync_recoversFromFaulted)
caught it. A status code can only be published by a node that exists, and a
missing address-space entry is far harder to diagnose than a Bad quality.
- An unreadable catalog FAULTS Initialize; it does not reject every tag. That is
the absence of evidence about the tags, not evidence against them — rejecting
all of them would serve a confidently-empty address space and send the operator
hunting typos that do not exist. Zero visible schemas is treated the same way,
because that is exactly what a missing GRANT looks like. Faulting lands
DriverInstanceActor in Reconnecting with its retry timer running.
- Bounded load: one schema list, one default-schema scalar, then one ListTables
per distinct authored schema and one ListColumns per distinct authored relation
— never a full catalog enumeration, and nothing after Initialize. Every
authored name reaches the catalog queries as a bound @schema/@table parameter,
so building the allow-list cannot itself be an injection vector.
- ISqlDialect gains DefaultSchemaSql ("SELECT SCHEMA_NAME()"). An unqualified
`TagValues` must resolve in whatever schema the SERVER reports; hardcoding dbo
would be a silent lie on any estate that maps service accounts to their own
default schema. It is a query, not a constant, because the answer is
per-connection.
- Accepted v1 limitation: a 3-part db.schema.table (or linked-server name)
addresses a catalog this connection cannot enumerate, so it cannot be
allow-listed and is rejected with a message pointing at the fix — expose the
data through a view in the connected database.
VerifyLivenessAsync's wall-clock pattern is extracted to RunBoundedAsync and
reused, so the new I/O gets the same R2-01 / STAB-14 protection rather than a
second hand-rolled copy. (It also fixes a latent bug in the extracted code: the
OperationCanceledException arm detached the wrong task.)
Tests: 24 pure gate tests + 9 end-to-end driver tests against the real SQLite
catalog + 3 new live tests against the real SQL Server on 10.100.0.35 (21 in that
suite now pass, exercising the real SELECT SCHEMA_NAME() + INFORMATION_SCHEMA
path). Verified falsifiable: bypassing the gate turns exactly the three rejection
assertions red and leaves the rest green.
SqlInjectionRegressionTests is deliberately NOT rewritten to expect
BadNodeIdUnknown. It drives SqlPollReader directly, below the gate, and pins the
quoting backstop on its own — defence in depth is only worth the name if each
layer holds independently. Rewriting those assertions would delete the backstop's
only coverage and leave the gate a single point of failure. Its scope note, which
said the gate does not exist, is updated to say why it stays where it is.
Three findings from the code review of the dialect seam:
- QuoteIdentifier used char.IsControl, which only covers Unicode category Cc.
Bidi overrides, zero-width spaces, soft hyphen and BOM are category Cf and
passed through untouched. They cannot escape the brackets, so this is not an
injection bypass — but the method rejects control characters precisely to
protect the integrity of logged/audited statements, and Cf characters spoof
rendered text while comparing byte-different from the real catalog name
(Trojan Source, CVE-2021-42574). Same rule, same rationale, wider category.
- The XML docs on both files asserted that identifiers 'are sourced only from
catalog-validated (INFORMATION_SCHEMA) names' and that rejection is 'a
backstop, not the primary defence'. Neither is true yet: design §8.1 does
specify that gate, but nothing implements it and no task in the plan
schedules one, so an authored TagConfig table/column reaches QuoteIdentifier
unfiltered. The docs now say so, because under-scrutinising this method on
the strength of a filter that does not exist is exactly the failure mode.
- The control-character test only pinned NUL, so a regression to a
Contains('\0') check would still have passed. Pinned the whole Cc category
plus the new Cf rule; verified load-bearing by deleting the guard and
observing exactly the 5 new cases go red.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GASWkNEi68FSCtvr6rLoEW
The dialect owns the two things ADO.NET's System.Data.Common base types
cannot abstract: identifier quoting and the metadata-catalog SQL. It is
the driver's SQL-injection boundary — values always bind as DbParameters,
identifiers cannot, so the few that reach a command text are catalog-
sourced and pass through QuoteIdentifier.
QuoteIdentifier brackets one identifier part and doubles embedded ] (the
only metacharacter that can terminate a bracketed identifier early);
rejects null/empty/whitespace, >128 chars (T-SQL sysname ceiling), and any
control character (incl. NUL) as ArgumentException, without echoing the
untrusted value into the message. MapColumnType folds the design §3.7
families case-insensitively and never throws — an unrecognised family
falls back to String so a browse over an exotic column still renders;
timestamp/rowversion and time are deliberately NOT mapped to DateTime.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GASWkNEi68FSCtvr6rLoEW
Joseph Doherty