UNamur / Precise / Research fields / Data engineering

Database design

Data are at the core of modern information systems, so that their quality is critical for all the components of these systems. Poorly designed databases inevitably lead to costly maintenance and evolution of application programs. Though widely described for decades, database design methods still deserves further development. Indeed, modern databases brings new challenges for which current methods appear too weak.

Understanding and solving these challenges in a disciplined way, well beyond the simplistic approaches described in most textbooks, are among the main goals of the activities of the Data Engineering group of PReCISE. It has developed generic database analysis and design methodologies, based on the transformational techniques, that can be specialized to fit different data models and development contexts. In particular, it has developed solid techniques and methods for the following core processes: user-driven requirement acquisition and validation, schema integration, schema normalization, schema quality evaluation and improvement, correct and complete conceptual schema translation into DBMS DDL. In addition, they are supported by the DB-MAIN CASE tool.

These results are exploited and maintained by ReveR, a spin-off of PReCISE. These processes as well as their underlying concepts are described in detail in book [HAINAUT, 2012], intended to student and professional audience.