The exploration and understanding of Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) objects underpin various critical activities in computer systems, from debugging to reverse engineering. Traditional UNIX tooling like readelf, nm, and objdump have served the community reliably over the years. However, as the complexity and scale of software projects has grown, there arises a need for more intuitive, flexible, and powerful methods to investigate ELF objects. In this paper, we introduce sqlelf, an innovative tool that empowers users to probe ELF objects through the expressive power of SQL. By modeling ELF objects as relational databases, sqlelf offers the following advantages over conventional methods. Our evaluations demonstrate that sqlelf not only provides more nuanced and comprehensive insights into ELF objects but also significantly reduces the effort and time traditionally required for ELF exploration tasks

翻译：可执行与可链接格式（ELF）对象的探索和理解支撑着计算机系统中从调试到逆向工程的各种关键活动。传统的UNIX工具如readelf、nm和objdump多年来一直可靠地服务于社区。然而，随着软件项目复杂性和规模的不断增长，我们需要更直观、更灵活、更强大的方法来研究ELF对象。在本文中，我们介绍sqlelf，一种创新工具，它通过SQL的表达能力使用户能够探究ELF对象。通过将ELF对象建模为关系数据库，sqlelf相比传统方法具有以下优势。我们的评估表明，sqlelf不仅能提供对ELF对象更细致、更全面的洞察，而且显著减少了传统上ELF探索任务所需的工作量和时间。