Data Migration
The most common data migration scenario is moving from one version of a business application to a newer version. Typically the software vendor can provide a tool that assists with the migration, but this is usually going from one version to the next consecutive version (i.e. going from version 2.0 to 3.0). If you are migrating from an old version to a much newer version (i.e. going from version 10.0 to 15.0) you are faced with doing consecutive migrations: version 10.0 to version 11.0, version 11.0 to version 12.0, version 12.0 to version 13.0, etc. It may be simpler, less time consuming and less expensive to do an independent data migration without using the software vendor's tools.
If you are moving from one business application to a completely different business application it will be necessary to do a data migration to convert data from the older business application's proprietary format to the new business application's proprietary format. Depending on the size and complexity of the migration you will need some or all of the following design documents:
- Data Quality Analysis
- Data Migration Approach
- Data Migration Strategy
- Data Migration Solution Architecture
- Data Migration Mapping Specifications
These documents are used to build the scripts necessary to extract, validate, convert and load the data into the new business application.