Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
so, it makes sense to move to the latest and the greatest. Even if the
migration is painful, it keeps some of the troops motivated because they
get to work on projects involving the latest technologies.
The Strategy of Migration
It is tempting to treat an opportunity for migration also as an opportunity
to clean up the application: let us redesign the system, make it more
powerful, more user friendly. It is like moving to a different house. Should
one bring over all the old stuff, or get rid of it and start anew? Should
one remodel the house one is moving into before moving in or do it
later? While many may prefer to start anew, their options may be limited
by either a lack of funds or the infeasibility of waiting for a remodeling
project to be completed before moving in. Software migrations go through
similar reasoning processes. While applications do not come across totally
unchanged, trying to migrate and enhance an application at the same time
increases the risk considerably.
The house-moving analogy can be carried a step further. Even if one
recognizes that the old furniture seems to be out of place in the new
house, it is prudent to live in the new place for some time, get used to
it, and then make design calls suitable for the new house. After all, one
is more than likely to discover certain things about the new house —
light, shade, noise levels, movement of people in the house, lines of sight
from neighbors' yards — that will affect one's design ideas and options.
Despite recognizing this, many organizations tend to club migrations with
enhancements. The argument in favor of doing that is driven by one's
wish to “optimize” the opportunity. Another argument recognizes that the
case for renovation gets weaker as one gets used to the (new) status quo.
While one would like to get the most out of the move costs, one needs
to avoid an undue emphasis on the short-term migration costs as compared
to the total life-cycle costs. There may be advantages to such an approach
as long as the scope of the work and the risks are properly evaluated.
The Use of Tools
In any migration project, the suggestion arises as to the use of migration
tools. Migration tools do exist but provide limited degrees of automation.
These could be tools for converting code in one language or environment
to another (e.g., stored procedures or triggers). They are basically trans-
lation tools. Automated translation has not been an easy problem to solve,
particularly for natural languages. Programming languages are more formal
