Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
neutral format such as ASCII comma-separated “text”) on tapes or printouts
for any future reference.
The Right Staff
Migration is detail-oriented work. Staying at a high level would be inad-
equate. At a high level, many technologies and platforms look very similar;
for example, two cars are based on the same principles of internal
combustion engines, or all relational databases support SQL (Structured
Query Language). However, this kind of simplification could lead to
underestimating the effort involved.
Before one recognizes the differences, one must acknowledge that
differences do exist. There is a joke of a teacher advising one of her
students — “Whenever you are in doubt, consult a dictionary.” The student
replied, “I am never in doubt.” Likewise, we have seen engineers who
have spent years working with just one RDBMS. They could never appre-
ciate that another RDBMS might be handling things differently. Some of
their pet features, such as Roles or Row level locking, may not be available
in the destination system. We therefore suggest that a good migration
mindset should consist of a healthy mix of doubt and skepticism, with a
belief that hidden problems will surface.
While staffing a team, should one have more persons knowledgeable
in the source technologies or the destination technologies? It should be
the destination that is favored, yet it is also necessary that knowledge of
both the source system (or application) and the technology is required
(Figure 11.3). This is easily achieved by including a person who has
worked on the source application, thereby bringing on board both the
source technology and the domain knowledge.
he ability to recognize differences at a fairly detailed
level is key to a successful migration project.
Figure 11.3
Spot differences early
.
