Definition
Plain language
A tool that lets you search a codebase the way you'd search a database, looking for suspicious patterns.
As stated in the literature
GitHub's semantic code analysis engine that treats source code as a queryable database for finding vulnerability patterns.
Why it matters: It turns vulnerability hunting from grep-and-pray into systematic, repeatable queries over a project's actual code structure.
For example, a security team writes a CodeQL query that flags every place user input flows into a SQL string without escaping.
Heard on the show
“The authors do an analysis of four other code-graph platforms — Sourcegraph, Semgrep, CodeQL, Qodana — and argue that the same preconditions exist there.”Episode 039 — When Smarter Agents Get Fooled by Three Extra Nodes in a Database