Journal
JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS AND SOFTWARE
Volume 81, Issue 5, Pages 764-771Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2007.07.005
Keywords
database; reverse engineering; entity-relationship diagram; data model; case study
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Current database reverse engineering researches presume that the information regarding semantics of attributes, primary keys, and foreign keys in database tables is complete. However, this may not be the case. In a recent DBRE effort to derive a data model from a table-based database system, we find the data content of many attributes are not related to their names at all. In this paper, we present a process that extracts an extended entity-relationship diagram from a table-based database with little descriptions for the fields in its tables and no description for keys. The primary inputs of our approach are system display forms, table schema and data instance. We utilize screen displays to construct form instances. Secondly, code analysis and data analysis involving comparisons of fields and decomposition of fields are applied to extract attribute semantics from forms and table schemas, followed by the determination of primary keys, foreign keys and constraints of the database system. In the final step of conceptualization, with the processes of table mergence and relationship identification, an extended ER diagram is successfully extracted in a case study. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Inc.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available