Reverse-Engineering Unknown Databases at Scale with Arisyn

Every data team eventually inherits a system nobody understands.

· Thousands of tables

· Missing foreign keys

· Inconsistent naming

· No documentation

· Original engineers long gone

Then the business says:

“We need to migrate this.”
“We need to integrate it.”
“We need to audit it.”

Before any of that, you need something more basic:

What is the actual data model?

In most legacy systems, that model only exists implicitly inside the data.

Why Manual Reverse Engineering Fails

Typical approach:

· Browse schemas

· Inspect random rows

· Search for matching column names

Run experimental JOINs

This might work for 50 tables.

It collapses at 5,000.

Lineage tools don’t help much either — they show pipelines, not structural relationships inside the database itself.

What you really need is automated structural discovery.

How Arisyn Reconstructs Unknown Models

Arisyn approaches reverse engineering as a statistical problem.

1️⃣ Bulk Field Fingerprinting

It scans tables and extracts structural signals from every column:

· Distinct value counts

· Null distribution patterns

· Domain characteristics

2️⃣ Relationship Clustering

Columns are compared using statistical compatibility modeling — not naming conventions.

Structurally aligned fields are grouped into relationship clusters, even across systems.

3️⃣ Graph Construction

Verified relationships are assembled into a machine-readable graph:

· Tables → nodes

· Validated links → edges

· Multi-hop paths inferred automatically

This reconstructs the hidden architecture of the system.

From Discovery to Migration

Once the relationship graph exists, teams can:

· Identify core entity hubs

· Detect implicit foreign-key structures

· Generate migration mappings

· Produce structured documentation outputs

Instead of guessing how the system works, you operate from a verified structural blueprint.

Why This Matters

Legacy systems aren’t disappearing.

Cloud migrations, consolidations, and compliance audits all require deep structural understanding.

Manual reverse engineering doesn’t scale.

Arisyn turns it into an algorithmic process.

And when you’re dealing with thousands of tables, that difference is everything.

Learn more: https://www.arisyn.com