Database Reverse Engineering

Reverse Engineering (RE) according to Wikipedia is the process to find a guiding principle of the technology of a device, object or system through analysis of the structure, functions and operations owned. Suppose we already have a device or system that we know nothing about design and the manufacturing process, due to a cause either damage to, or is inherited from the manufacturer that does not leave the design documents, or even the result of piracy (sometimes occurred in the military to dismantle the device design of the enemy war ). With the RE process we can get a description of the structure, function and operation of the device or systemRE can be applied in a mechanical system, electronics and software. In the field of software engineering in particular on the Database, RE engineering can be applied to parse the database structure has been formed. This process is necessary when we work with (legacy system) or a system of 'legacy' which has been running. When we 'inherited' the database is sometimes not included documentation incomplete or even nonexistent. This will be a big problem when we will repair or develop systems that use these databases. RE assist in solving the problem with the database structure to parse the visual form of a chart into a complete table with the data type of each fieldnya and also either a primary key constraint or foreign key as shown in the picturetaken from: http://microolap.com/products/database/mysql-designer

Applications for RE process database is usually bundled with applications Database Design. Some applications, among others, (*) are paid: Sybase Power Designer, MicroOLAP Database Designer (MySQL & PostgreSQL) and (**) is free: fabForce DBDesigner (MySQL).