文档介绍：Design and Evaluation of a Visual Framework for Facilitating Re-engineering and Re-use of Relational Databases
Haider A Ramadhan, Zuhoor Al-Khanjari, and Hala Al-Lawati
Computer Science Department, Sultan Qaboos University, PO Box 36 Muscat 123, Oman
ABSTRACT
Despite their importance in activities dealing with maintenance, customization, re-use, and re-engineering of relational databases, very few visualization based frameworks for databases are developed. We present a visual framework for facilitating tasks associated with understanding the structure and design of a relational database system. The framework provides coordinated visualization of the database structure and of various implicit relationships among its relations, . associations and path views. We also present results of an empirical evaluation conducted to assess the usefulness of the proposed visualization framework. Results obtained from the evaluation seemed to suggest that the visual framework provided great aid to subjects in efficiently and quickly understanding both explicit and implicit structure of the database and its various associations.
1. BACKGROUND
The task of understanding the structure and design of a relational database systems is plex one. There are many dimensions plexity, three important among which are:
The overall structure of the database. This includes the set of relations, their