A knowledge-based system for performing reverse engineering of relational databases

Abstract

A knowledge-based system, called the Knowledge Extraction System (KES), is presented which performs the process of reverse engineering of relational databases. KES generates an extended entity-relationship (EER) model from a relational database. Within its extraction procedure, domain semantics are obtained by analyzing the data schema and data instances of an existing database, by using heuristics, or asking the user. Relations and attributes are classified into several categories and then converted into the corresponding modelling structures of the EER model. KES demonstrates how knowledge-based system technology can be applied to ease the work of database reverse engineering. It also illustrates that the reverse engineering process can be implemented at a high level of automation. To do so, KES is integrated with the target database management system so that data can be analyzed directly through dynamic SQL queries.