Transformation-based Database Reverse Engineering

This is an abstract of a revision of the original paper (ER'93 pre-proceedings2) that presents a DBMS-independent database reverse engineering (DBRE) methodology based on a generic process model and on transformation techniques. DBRE is proposed as a twophase process consisting in recovering the DBMS-dependent data structures (data structure extraction) then in recovering their semantics (data structure conceptualization). The second phase, that is strongly linked with the logical design phase of current database design methodologies, can be performed by application of a selected set of standard schema transformations. The paper illustrates the methodology by applying it to various DBRE processes : removing optimization structures, untranslating database/file structures, and finally conceptual normalization.