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Data Reverse Engineering:
Slaying the Legacy Dragon
(ISBN 0-07-000748-9)

"Anyone charged with developing a migration strategy from one application environment to another will find this book useful."

Terry Moriarty is principal consultant at Inastrol (INformation ASset conTROL) specializing in data architecture and metadata management. Her regular December column ENTERPRISE VIEW in Database Programming and Designis devoted to her annual reading list. In her December 1997 column titled Books for Business Rules issue she wrote (pp. 76-77):

"Today, one of the greatest stumbling blocks we face when migrating to a new business vision is the organization's data. Nowhere is the lack of systems thinking more evident than in the disparate data that has been designed to be optimal for a specific business function but fails to support the entire business process. Much of business reengineering involves restructuring data to enable all business processes. But before we can do this, we must know what data is available, how it is used, and what each data item means. Aiken's book focus on this process.

The book opens with several case studies that illustrate the problem many organizations face with they encounter business opportunities that require data sharing. For example, one case study describes a frequent flyer program that lets members accrue mileage points from business partners (such as long-distance phone or credit card companies) whose systems are outside the airline's control. The airline's alliance partners provide data about their customer's product usage. While this data should enhance the airline's business system, its impact on the information systems proved quite devastating: The only way to get the data into the frequent flyer system was to enter it manually, an error-prone approach. As a result, statements reported incorrect or incomplete data about a customer's mileage.

As Aiken stresses, "the major impact of organizational data problems is that they aren't recognized as such. Lack of organizational awareness of data as either an asset or a potential problem often results in situations were resources are spent solving organizational data problems with out recognizing them as such or applying the correct solution procedures to the problems." This hidden organization resource consumption manifests itself in wasted or missed production, diagnosing and fixing problems, missed system development, and inefficient systems.

Aiken argues that to achieve enterprise integration, we need active enterprise models that are "revised to reflect the changes in the organization or the environment, so that new behavior patterns can be understood. Once validated in that they effectively predict aspects of future organization performance, the models can be used as a strategic weapon to evaluate alternate courses of action."

Aiken also looks into data reverse engineering activities from a project manager's perspective and provides a template project plan that includes detailed descriptions of the activities and the stakeholders involved.

Anyone charged with developing a migration strategy from one application environment to another will find this book useful. Aiken's approach-grounded on the Zachman Information Systems Architecture-applies to any data migration effort, whether its objective is to source the data warehouse, merge two data portfolios together after a merger or acquisition, or convert to a purchased software package."

• examine the table of contents
• read the foreword by Clive Finkelstein
• read the "The Necessity of Data Reverse Engineering" by Elliot J. Chikofsky
• turn the book over and read the rear jacket material

check out a data reengineering case studylearn more about the Reengineering Bibiographyinquire about the author's backgroundcheck out one of many web-based reengineering collections read about the adoption and supplemental materials contact the authorpurchase this and other data reengineering books from my bookstore (run in association with Amazon.com) return to Peter Aiken's home page or visit Clive Finkelstein's Information Engineering Home Page.Thanks for being one of the visitors to this page since March 23, 1997.