Static and dynamic reverse engineering of relational database applications: a form-driven methodology

We propose a form-based approach for reverse engineering of legacy relational database applications. The approach consists of three dependent steps: (1) acquisition of both structure and instances of forms; (2) extraction of the static aspect of the legacy database: through a combination of forms structures and data instance analysis, forms relational sub-schemas and their constraints are derived. These relational sub-schemas are mapped into object sub-schemas, which will be merged into global object schema that presents the whole underlying database; (3) extraction of the dynamic aspect of the legacy application: through the results of static aspect extraction, form behavior relationships are extracted in order to construct both methods of call graph of form and forms network