Database reverse engineering tools
Natash Ali Mian, Tauqeer Hussain · International Conference on Software Engineering · 2008
Almost every information system processes and manages huge data stored in a database system. For improvement and maintenance of legacy systems, the conceptual models of such systems are required. With the growing complexity of information systems and the information processing requirements, the need for database reverse engineering is increasing every day. Different Computer Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) tools have been developed as research projects or as commercial products which reverse engineer a given database to its conceptual schema. This paper explores the capabilities of existing CASE tools and evaluates to which extent these tools can successfully reverse engineer a given database system. It also identifies the constructs of a conceptual model which are not yet supported by the database reverse engineering tools. This research provides motivation for software engineers to develop CASE tools which can reverse engineer the identified constructs and can therefore improve the productivity of reverse engineers.