Continuous database engineering
Ajantha Dahanayake, Bernhard Thalheim · International Journal of Business Information Systems · 2013
This paper provides a new approach for continuous development of database systems. Classically, complete knowledge about the application is a starting point for the requirements development. It is also often assumed that requirements are held stable over a longer period of time. Business practice is however different. Applications, technology and business users are constantly changing. Moreover, quantity structures of classes in a database oscillate in databases lifetime. Therefore, we observe a continuous change for the databases that needs sophisticated and thoughtful support. We propose a new approach to continuous database engineering. It incorporates classical database engineering and bases change management on business activity monitoring (BAM). BAM supports the tracking of real life usage of the system, i.e., elicitation of real application portfolio and important tasks. This information can be used for derivation of change strategies to database redesign since we can capture which part of the system is (non)essential, which functions are (non)crucial, which support is (un)necessary and which class hampers high system performance.