Towards the reverse engineering of renormalized relational databases

Abstract

The paper describes a method to cope with denormalized relational schemas in a database reverse engineering process. We propose two main steps to improve the understanding of data semantics. Firstly we extract inclusion dependencies by analyzing the equi join queries embedded in application programs and by querying the database extension. Secondly we show how to discover only functional dependencies which influence the way attributes should be restructured. The method is interactive since an expert user has to validate the presumptions on the elicited dependencies. Moreover, a restructuring phase leads to a relational schema in third normal form provided with key constraints and referential integrity constraints. Finally, we sketch how an entity relationship schema can be derived from such information.