The Nature of Data Reverse Engineering

Data Reverse Engineering is a specific information system engineering domain aiming at rebuilding the documentation of legacy databases. The paper explores this domain by presenting the basic problems (such as the implicit construct recovery problem) as well as techniques and tools for solving them. Two main phases are described, namely data structure extraction, through which the complete logical schema is elicited, and data structure conceptualization, that interpret them in conceptual terms. The paper describes and discusses a reference process model that identifies the main classes of problems, their solving techniques and tools that support the processes.