DBA Companion: a Tool for Database Analysis
Résumé
Extracting information about data semantics from existing databases is essential in any re-engineering process. Several sources of information can be relevant for tackling this task, e.g. physical schema, database extension or application programs. In this paper, we present a tool called DBA Companion which can be an help to deal with the understanding of existing relational databases. The tool is based on the notion of agree sets. Agree sets allow to devise a framework dealing with a wide range of design problems. Agree sets are seen as a common data centric step of several algorithms useful for database analysis. These algorithms are: functional and approximate dependency inference, minimal key inference, example relation generation and normal form tests. We show how the framework is integrated in a tool which can provide some help to database administrators or analysts. We consider two problems: functional dependency inference and approximate functional dependency inference.