Described is automatically processing an initial database repro (text representing a bug when corresponding script is executed in a database engine) into a min-repro (a subset of the text) that is simplified version of the initial repro yet still contains the bug. A parse tree representative of the initial database repro is processed into simplified parse trees based on language grammar rules, e.g., by replacing higher level nodes with descendant nodes. Repros of the simplified parse trees are executed to determine which simplified repros still fail execution because of the bug (that is, the simplified repros were not oversimplified). A minimum simplified parse tree with respect to a desired level of minimality is found from among those failing repros, with the simplified repro that corresponds to the minimum simplified parse tree output as the min-repro.