Database Reverse Engineering Methods: What is Missing?

Database reverse engineering (DBRE) is a process of extracting requirements from a running system. The process is carried to understand the system having least design and architecture documentation. DBRE is very beneficial when we are expanding our systems or shifting to a newer technology. Since its start, reverse engineering has given hard time to software engineers but researchers are doing a continuous effort to make the process more effective and efficient. Many frameworks and methods have been proposed in the literature; each has its inputs, limitations, assumptions and outputs. CASE tools have been developed by researchers and commercial companies, but no tool provides a complete set of features to reverse engineer a database to a conceptual schema, also a concrete formal model is missing. Few common problems arise while reverse engineering of any system using existing approaches. In this review paper we have analyzed different methods proposed in the literature, discussed their strengths and limitations. Major problems faced by the reverse engineers while using existing methods are identified and discussed. This paper will motivate the software engineers to develop a DBRE method which takes minimal set of inputs, applies least assumptions and generates better output with least or no human