Title: Continuous database engineering

Authors: Ajantha Dahanayake; Bernhard Thalheim

Addresses: Department of Computer Information Science, Prince Sultan University, P.O. Box 53073, Riyadh 1583, Saudi Arabia ' Department of Computer Science, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, 24098 Kiel, Germany

Abstract: This paper provides a new approach for continuous development of database systems. Classically, complete knowledge about the application is a starting point for the requirements development. It is also often assumed that requirements are held stable over a longer period of time. Business practice is however different. Applications, technology and business users are constantly changing. Moreover, quantity structures of classes in a database oscillate in databases lifetime. Therefore, we observe a continuous change for the databases that needs sophisticated and thoughtful support. We propose a new approach to continuous database engineering. It incorporates classical database engineering and bases change management on business activity monitoring (BAM). BAM supports the tracking of real life usage of the system, i.e., elicitation of real application portfolio and important tasks. This information can be used for derivation of change strategies to database redesign since we can capture which part of the system is (non)essential, which functions are (non)crucial, which support is (un)necessary and which class hampers high system performance.

Keywords: business information systems; database engineering; enterprise systems; exceptional events handling; business activity monitoring; BAM; business application portfolios; BAP; database application portfolios; DAP; change management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2013.054332

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2013 Vol.13 No.2, pp.133 - 150

Published online: 27 Sep 2013 *

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