[AccessD] Is anyone migrating data?

John Colby jwcolby at ColbyConsulting.com
Thu Oct 27 22:54:23 CDT 2005


I am right in the middle of a data migration job.  I am building a simple
two table (so far) tool to assist me in organizing the data migration.  This
will be a recurring migration, fairly complex.  The client hired people to
build the system and get the data migrated once but that developer did not
document the process, nor save the queries etc.  Thus I am having to learn
the whole process from scratch using the "sit with the client and ask
questions" method.  They want it documented this time naturally.

I have migrated many different databases over the years but mostly the
migrations were "one-shot" migrations designed to get the data from
denormalized tables in to a new system I was building to replace the old
system.  In this case, the old system will stay (mostly) with the same data
having to be imported every month, or quarter - something like that.

The tool is pretty simple, just a form to list the table names, in the order
the tables need to be migrated, and some attributes to describe what that
step is doing, then a child table to hold the query / SQL statement / code
to run to migrate the data into that table.  Anyone who has done this stuff
knows that the process is usually order sensitive in terms of which tables
get migrated when, and also the order that the queries are run for any given
table.  My objective is just to document the table / order / requirement /
data source, plus the queries / order used for each table, with comments.
In the end I will have a little program that pulls each record and applies
the queries in the order they are in the table, such that the process is
"push button" (with luck) and the client can do it themselves.
Documentation will be in the comments in the table and can be pulled into a
report.

If anyone else is doing this kind of stuff and wishes to collaborate with
me, contact me offline. 

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

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