Database Sampling to Support the Development of Information Systems: Building database prototypes to increase the quality of software development processes

A prototype database is a model of a database which exhibits the desired properties, in terms of its schema and data values, of an operational database. Database prototyping has been proposed as a technique to support the database application development process. Existing work on this area has been widely ignored in practice mainly on the grounds that its benefits, i.e. an increase in the quality of the resulting software systems, do not justify the costs of developing and using a satisfactory prototype of the database under construction. Increasingly more software development projects consist of extending or enhancing existing systems, as opposed to developing new ones. Examples include legacy information systems migration and WEB-enabling existing systems. In these types of projects, using the entire operational database may not be cost-effective and a carefully selected subset may be more appropriate. The availability of operational data and a database schema can significantly reduce the effort required to build an appropriate prototype database to support the project at hand. This work investigates how such a prototype database should be constructed.