sql-schema-comparer: Support of multi-language refactoring with relational databases

Abstract

Refactoring is a method to change a source-code's structure without modifying its semantics and was first introduced for object-oriented code. Since then refactorings were defined for relational databases too. But database refactorings must be treated differently because a database schema's structure defines semantics used by other applications to access the data in the schema. Thus, many database refactorings may break interaction with other applications if not treated appropriately. We discuss problems of database refactoring in regard to Java code and present sql-schema-comparer, a library to detect refactorings of database schemes. The sql-schema-comparer library is our first step to more advanced tools supporting developers in their database refactoring efforts.