A discussion is provided of the value of database reverse engineering as a way to assess the quality of software that a company is considering purchasing. Database quality could be a confirmation of overall quality. If the product has an unsound database, other quality issues are likely to become apparent, including unsatisfactory programming. A consultant says his experience with reverse engineering of database quality as a way to evaluate software shows that the process helps prospective purchasers to gain a complete understanding of the product itself, and that the time to do the evaluation, which can be only a few person-weeks, is negligible as compared with the millions of dollars in costs for purchase and deployment of the application. When reverse engineering requires vendors to improve their products, vendors feel the pressure to upgrade software development practices to pass inspection. Success is then dependent less on marketing expertise and more on technical excellence. Topics covered include connecting database and product quality; quality issues; results interpretation; and reverse engineering and ethics. Data gathered in reverse-engineering has been shown to be a useful indication of historical software quality, and increased use of database design tools could be the reason for a small improvement in database design quality. Modeling shows little improvement, and the probable reason is that universities do not teach students the art and thought processes of software modeling.