Abstract
The paper analyses some of the practical problems that arise when the requirements of an information system evolve, and when the database and its application programs are to be modified accordingly. It presents four important strategies to cope with this evolution, namely forward maintenance, backward maintenance, reverse engineering and anticipating design. A common, generic, framework that can support these strategies is described. It is based on a generic data structure model, on a transformational approach to database engineering, and on a design process model. The paper discusses how this framework allows formalizing these evolution strategies, and describes a generic CASE tool that supports database applications maintenance.
The DB-MAIN project is partly supported by ARIANE-II (Be), Banque UCL (Lux), Centre de recherche public H. Tudor (Lux), CGER (Be), Cockrill-Sambre (Be), Computer Associates, CONCIS (Fr), DIGITAL, IBM, OBLOG Software (Port), Winterthur (Be), 3 Suisses (Be). It is developed in collaboration with the Database Laboratory of the EPFL (Lausanne, CH). The DB-PROCESS subproject is supported by the Communauté Française de Belgique.
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Hainaut, J.L., Englebert, V., Henrard, J., Hick, J.M., Roland, D. (1994). Database evolution: the DB-MAIN approach. In: Loucopoulos, P. (eds) Entity-Relationship Approach — ER '94 Business Modelling and Re-Engineering. ER 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 881. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58786-1_76
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58786-1_76
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