When Requirements Elicitation Meets Database Reverse Engineering

The first step of most database design methodologies consists in eliciting user requirements from various sources such as user interviews and corporate documents. These requirements formalize into a conceptual schema of the application domain, typically an entity-relationship diagram. This paper claims that prototype user interfaces drawn by users themselves are a highly valuable source of requirements. Considering these interfaces as a kind of physical view on the database to be developed, reverse engineering techniques can be applied to derive the conceptual schema of the information they convey. This report briefly recalls some basic elements of database design and database reverse engineering, then develops the role of user-drawn interfaces as sources of requirements. It also describes the ReQuest approach, a tool-supported analysis and development framework based on these principles, the goal of which is to build quality interactive data-intensive applications.