Clustering relations into abstract ER schemas for database reverse engineering
2002; Elsevier BV; Volume: 45; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s0167-6423(02)00057-6
ISSN1872-7964
AutoresPedro Sousa, Lurdes Pedro-de-Jesus, Gonçalo Pereira, Fernando Brito e Abreu,
Tópico(s)Distributed systems and fault tolerance
ResumoDatabase reverse engineering (DBRE) methods recover conceptual data models from physical databases. The bottom-up nature of these methods imposes two major limitations. First, they do not provide an initial high-level abstract schema suitable for use as a basis for reasoning about the application domain: a single detailed schema is only produced at the very end of the project. Second, they provide no support for a divide-and-conquer approach: the entire database schema must be analysed and processed as a unit. This paper presents a simple solution to overcome both limitations. In our proposal, relations are grouped based on their primary keys. Each group can be perceived in two ways: as a relational schema that can be reversed engineered as a standalone DBRE project; and as an element, either an entity or a relationship, of a high-level abstract schema that provides initial insight about the application domain. We also present examples from actual large database systems.
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