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European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems

ADBIS 2017: New Trends in Databases and Information Systems pp 410–421Cite as

Formalization of Database Reverse Engineering

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Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 767))

Abstract

During the life cycle of an Information System, the original design of the database may be difficult to acquire. The database schema may have been continuously modified and drifted away semantically from the intended design, or perhaps no conceptual modelling method was employed at all. A conceptual schema offers a much richer description of a domain than the database schema, this makes it important for, among other reasons, the maintenance of semantic consistency of the database at runtime. Database reverse engineering involves the retrieval of domain semantics from an existing set of database schemas into a conceptual schema. Though several research works exist on creating database reverse engineering methodologies, the process in itself has never been properly and fully formalised with an emphasis on its correctness. This paper introduces the ongoing research surrounding database reverse engineering and the goal of rendering a formal reverse engineering framework. The expected formalism will be valuable to database and domain experts as a sound foundation for implementing better reverse engineering tools.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Relations consist of typed attributes, with each attribute belonging to its own finite attribute domain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Domenicani 3, 39100, Bolzano, Italy

    Nonyelum Ndefo

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  1. Nonyelum Ndefo
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Correspondence to Nonyelum Ndefo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Riga Technical University , Riga, Latvia

    Mārīte Kirikova

  2. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Kjetil Nørvåg

  3. University of Cyprus , Nicosia, Cyprus

    George A. Papadopoulos

  4. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano , Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

    Johann Gamper

  5. Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland

    Robert Wrembel

  6. Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France

    Jérôme Darmont

  7. University of Bologna , Bologna, Italy

    Stefano Rizzi

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Ndefo, N. (2017). Formalization of Database Reverse Engineering. In: Kirikova, M., et al. New Trends in Databases and Information Systems. ADBIS 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 767. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67162-8_40

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67162-8_40

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67161-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67162-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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