Data Migration Expert Forum

What is a typical data migration project team structure?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:19:31 +0000

Question received from member (02/Apr/09):

Hi, we're putting together a data migration plan for a new ERP system, just wanted to check with the expert panel how they go about structuring the various project teams.

What are the main teams in a typicaly migration project and how should they interact? eg. Who has responsible for signing off business requirements, who signs off technical requirements etc.?

Really appreciate any help you can provide as there is nothing really documented anywhere on all this.

Post-migration validation - is there an industry standard?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:20:59 +0000

Question received from member:

"I'm interested to see if there are some 'standard' guidelines for the volume of data or other metrics that should be considered when establishing a data validation effort post migration.

I would like to see if there is a metric to corroborate or enhance the approach we're defining for our migration effort.

Is there an industry standard for testing coverage pertaining to a data migration/integration project?"

Experiencing rounding errors when migrating from EBCDIC to ASCII via VSAM to Solaris

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:28:08 +0000

Hi, I'm currently working in a data migration project which involves migrating data from mainframe to solaris. The components that I'm currently working with is VSAM. VSAM datasets which are created by PL/1 programs, so they have data which correspond to PL/1 data types in them.

There are cetain data types which when converted from EBCDIC to ASCII cannot be used, because the way it is interpreted in Mainframe and Solaris are different.

We are using a tool called MTK from Clerity to convert the data from EBCDIC to ASCII.

The problem that I'm facing is, while validating the conversion process.

Data Migration Planning - What are the natural sequence of events to follow?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:43:58 +0000

We're putting together a project plan for a migration to be carried out in '09, it's a billing migration to a new system.

My role is to put together a basic plan of the big events that will happen on the project with some timescales and dependencies.

However I'm kinda struggling because the technical delivery teams are very vague about what needs to be delivered by when and in what sequence, we're delivering the project in-house.

are there any tasks that are core to any migration so that at least we can make a framework to work around.

We seem to be going in circles so if you can offer some advice it would sure help me gel the different sides together.

Thanks for any support you can offer.

Data migration testing project - what are the key things to consider?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:29:10 +0000

Hi, currently I am working on a data migration testing project and I would like to know the key important things of data migration from a testing perspective.

Things like identifying the key testing areas, how to go about developing test case / scripts, what Testing techniques to be used in the process etc.

Also, it would be very helpful if I can get access to some sample test cases and test scripts..

Looking forward for your help.

Thanks and Regards.

Need advice on migrating from Tandem to Oracle with zero downtime and synchronisation

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:39:00 +0000

We need to migrate customer and financial data for a cable company from legacy system to new system with almost zero downtime.

Does any available technology allow for complex data mapping modeling and auto-code generation?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:38:00 +0000

I'm looking for methods/technologies for data mapping in the context of structured data (database tables).

Does any available technology allows for complex data mapping modeling ?
Is this modelling user friendly ?

At last, does this technology enable code generation ?

Is there an application to manage a data dictionary?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:37:00 +0000

I'm looking to source an application that allows us to manage a Data Dictionary on behalf of our organisation.

The Data Dictionary needs to support the full data lifecycle as data moves from one system to another throughout the organisation from ingest to business intelligence. It needs to capture field names, definitions, data types, table names etc. It needs to cater for the changing naming and definitions as data migrates between systems.

Where ETL scripts or transformation processes are applied within or between databases, it needs to allow these processes to be 'made visible', and related documentation to be stored and made accessible. It also needs to support a formal definition of cross-database metadata.

Are there any applications that do this, or have I just discovered a business opportunity?

I'd be grateful for your ideas in this area.

Many thanks.

How do I QA our data migration?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:36:00 +0000

I'm part of the team saddled with the responsibility of QA'ing migrated data from our legacy system.

This is new to me and i was hoping I could get a sort of checklist that would help out in ensuring a thorough job is done.

We've been given Data Migration Tables (mapping tables) to guide in the exercise.

While I'm quite familiar with the legacy banking application, I'm not too familiar with the target system.

What are the key things to bear in mind?

Thanks for your tim.

How do I migrate Blobs?

Dylan Jones (Founder) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:36:00 +0000

We migrate data between two ORACLE database with ORACLE PL/SQL packages.

The record number is relatively low (around 10,000) for the subject I am concerning which is BLOB data migration. We don't use any ETL tool so far.

The migration procedure involves two processes:

1. Save file content into column with BLOB data type in ORACLE database.
2. Migrate data from one Oracle database to another.

I am more concerning the trickiness in the second process.

Since we don't have experience transfer BLOB data type, we are not quite sure what will happen regarding the data accuracy and performance.

Can you pass on any techniques for migrating blob objects in this scenario?