Data reverse engineering: a historical survey

Data reverse engineering is a rapidly growing field which is sometimes misunderstood. In our effort to promote the realization that data reverse engineering is a valuable and essential part of reverse engineering and is now finding its place in software engineering, we present a summary of the history of data reverse engineering. A definition of data reverse engineering, a summary of the history of what has been none and published, a statement about the state-of-the art today, and a comment on the future of DRE is presented.