DAHLIA: A visual analyzer of database schema evolution

In a continuously changing environment, software evolution becomes an unavoidable activity. The mining software repositories (MSR) field studies the valuable data available in software repositories such as source code version-control systems, issue/bug-tracking systems, or communication archives. In recent years, many researchers have used MSR techniques as a way to support software understanding and evolution. While many software systems are data-intensive, i.e., their central artefact is a database, little attention has been devoted to the analysis of this important system component in the context of software evolution. The goal of our work is to reduce this gap by considering the database evolution history as an additional information source to aid software evolution. We present DAHLIA (Database ScHema EvoLutIon Analysis), a visual analyzer of database schema evolution. Our tool mines the database schema evolution history from the software repository and allows its interactive, visual analysis. We describe DAHLIA and present our novel approach supporting data-intensive software evolution.