What is the CodeQL database creation step, and what inputs does it require?

• A. Creating a CodeQL database requires the source code and the target language; it builds a semantic model used by the queries
• B. Creating a CodeQL database requires the source code only
• C. Creating a CodeQL database requires the target language only
• D. Creating a CodeQL database requires the test suite

Answer: (C)

Creating a CodeQL database requires both the code you want to analyze and the language of that code. The language tells CodeQL which extractor and semantic model to apply, guiding how to parse and interpret the code. The source code provides the actual material the database is built from, so CodeQL can construct a language-specific semantic representation that queries operate on. Without the code, there’s nothing to analyze; without the language, CodeQL wouldn’t know how to parse or which concepts to extract. This is why the inputs are the codebase and its language—together they produce a usable database. The notion that only the language is needed misses the actual code, while the idea that only the source code is needed omits the necessary language specification. The test suite isn’t part of this step.