Definition
Database reverse engineering is the process through which the logical and conceptual schemas of a legacy database, or of a set of files, are reconstructed from various information sources such as DDL code, data dictionary contents, database contents or the source code of application programs that use the database.
Basically, database reverse engineering comprises three processes, namely physical schema extraction, logical schema reconstruction, and schema conceptualization. The first process consists in parsing the DDL code or the contents of an active data dictionary in order to extract the physical schema of the database. Reconstructing the logical schema implies analyzing additional sources such as the data and the source code of the application programs to discover implicit constraints and data structures, that is, constructs that have not been declared but that are managed by the information system or by its...
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Hainaut, JL., Henrard, J., Englebert, V., Roland, D., Hick, JM. (2009). Database Reverse Engineering. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_646
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_646
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