Methodology of Schema Integration for New Database Applications: A Practitioner's Approach

A practitioner’s approach to integrate databases and evolve them so as to support new database applications is presented. The approach consists of a joint bottom-up and top-down methodology; the bottom-up approach is taken to integrate existing database using standard schema integration techniques(B-Schema), the top-down approach is used to develop a database schema for the new applications(T-Schema). The T-Schema uses a joint functional-data analysis. The B-schema is evolved by comparing it with the generated T-schema. This facilitates an evolutionary approach to integrate existing databases to support new applications as and when needed. The mutual completeness check of the T-Schema against B-Schema derive the schema modification steps to be performed on B-Schema to meet the requirements of the new database applications. A case study is presented to illustrate the methodology. keywords: schema integration, joint functional-data analysis, data transformation, extended entity relationship model, data schema, functional schema