Re: reverse engineering, case tools and repositories

In article <30goeg$rqv_at_news4all.hacktic.nl>, stefan_at_hacktic.nl (stefan Verhagen) writes:

>I am looking for getting ER diagrams (with constraints) and process flow
 diagrams
>(data flow diagrams, or whatever you would call them). The idea of
>course being able to more easily adapt applications to changing business
>environments and possibly simplify upgrading to other versions of oracle.

Reverse engineering the data dictionary to generate an ER diagram is doable. This is what tools like Erwin, System Architect, etc do.

However, reverse engineering to get the data flow diagrams from the database seems unlikely. Is not this information imbedded in the application, not the database? The database maintains relationships between the entities, but states nothing with regards to sources, sinks, external inputs and outputs, intermediate results and the like that make up the data flow diagram. Unless a data dictionary maintains this information, it is unlikely Oracle's data dictionary (or any other products') will provide sufficient information to reverse engineer data flow.

Rick Cronau (rcronau_at_aol.com) Received on Wed Jul 20 1994 - 04:51:13 CEST