Michael R. Blaha

An approach for reverse engineering of relational databases

The process of software re-engineering consists of a reverse engineering step followed by a forward engineering step. During reverse engineering, one takes a past design or an implementation that embodies a design and extracts the essential problem domain content while discarding design optimizations and implementation decisions. During forward engineering, this model of the essence of an application becomes the basis for reimplementation in a new medium. Object-oriented models facilitate the =-engineering process because the same modeling paradigm is adept at representing abstract conceptual models and models with implementation decisions. Based on our experience with several examples, we propose a process for reverse engineering of relational databases.

Relational database design using an object-oriented methodology

Of the many approaches to relational database design, the Object Modeling Technique (OMT) is particularly effective. A comprehensive explanation and two applications show the semantic improvement of OMT over other approaches.

An object-oriented relational database

A relational DBMS and an object-oriented programming language can be combined to yield a surprisingly effective OO-DBMS for many applications.

Observed idiosyncracies of relational database designs

Several processes have been advanced in the literature for reverse engineering of relational databases. The inputs to these processes are relational tables and available contextual information. The output is a model of the underlying logical intent, apart from the implementation artifacts. Most of the existing processes for database reverse engineering are inadequate; they assume too high a quality of input information. The authors of these processes are skilled database designers and they are overly optimistic about the state-of-the-art, as practiced. This paper catalogs odd aspects of relational database designs that we have encountered over the past several years. Many of these database designs are from commercial software products.

Converting OO models into RDBMS schema

This approach combines OMTool, an object-model editor, with the Schemer compiler. Schemer converts the object model into SQL code, which can then be used to generate relational tables. The approach frees application experts from the details of database structure during early development and lets them customize tables to a particular RDBMS.<<ETX>>

A catalog of object model transformations

The process of software development is gradually achieving more rigor. Proficient developers now construct software indirectly through the abstraction of models. Models allow a developer to focus on the essential aspects of an application and defer details. Transformations extend the power of models, as the developer can substitute refinement and optimization of models for tedious manipulation of code. We catalog object modeling transformations that we have encountered in our application work.

A retrospective on industrial database reverse engineering projects - part 2

This paper presents a compilation of results from the reverse engineering of 35 databases. All the work was performed by the same reverse engineer (the author) over the past nine years. Since the quantity of data is large, it has been split between two papers.

On reverse engineering of vendor databases

We articulate the notion of reverse engineering of vendor databases and argue that this is a compelling technology that organizations should be routinely practicing. We take the perspective of a large organization that is a consumer of software (and not the perspective of a software vendor). We frequently reverse engineer vendor databases in our consulting practice and the technology has been enthusiastically received by industry.

Dimensions of database reverse engineering

One continues to be surprised by the variability of reverse engineering problems. When one tackles new problems, one often encounters situations not seen before. For these different situations, one has to adjust reverse engineering techniques, level of effort, and expectations. The paper characterizes dimensions of variation for reverse engineering of databases.

Bill-of-material configuration generation

A novel system which combines elements of database management, object-oriented technology and artificial intelligence is described. This system addresses certain bill-of-material (BOM) configuration generation problems and should not be confused with the more typical BOM recursive traversal problems. The BOM configuration system automatically extracts design rules from existing BOM designs. The system then, in turn, applies the rules to generate new BOM designs. It is shown that there are special requirements of the applications that make BOM configuration a difficult process.<<ETX>>