By Brian Arnold
Migrating business applications from one platform to another is a very arduous and time-consuming task. Many organizations find it incredibly difficult to determine where to even start. Once they begin the investigation process, they often begin to realize how expensive the process will be. The entire process of just the investigations into migrating to another platform can be enough to overwhelm an IT organization.
So how can you start the migration process and keep it under control? You need to remember the 3 ‘A’s of application migration:
Advise - Rather than just assuming you need to migrate all your business apps, it’s a good idea to gather information and advise your organization on the applications that really need to be migrated.
Analyze - Once you have a list of applications to migrate, you will need to perform advanced analysis of those applications to determine the difficulty of the code migration. In this stage there may also be the need to massage the data in the applications to prepare them for the migration process.
Archive - For the applications that will not be fully migrated into a live application on another platform, a method to archive and retain the data for future continued access must be employed. Application migration is a good opportunity to prune the data and perhaps only migrate the most recent records, leaving the older information available in an archive.
By following these steps, you can streamline the entire migration process and reduce costs significantly. But how do you implement these steps?
This is where Teamstudio can help. We have a series of applications that can perform the 3 ‘A’s very easily to assist you with these processes. In this post I will describe the Teamstudio applications that can help and what they can do for you during your migration projects.
Advise
Teamstudio Adviser is an application that can scan your entire HCL Domino server environments for Notes database details, usage and complexity of the design.
The purpose of Adviser is to provide you with a wealth of information about your Notes databases, and to advise you on which databases are in heavy usage and how complex their design is.
With the advice that Teamstudio Adviser provides, you can quickly and easily determine which Notes databases should be migrated, archived or retired.
Within Adviser you can also setup “Search Terms”. These are special values that can be searched for within the design of the Notes databases to determine if they are more or less complex than you imagine. If there are specific design methodologies which have been employed in your Notes databases which can make the migration process more complex, Teamstudio Adviser can identify those databases by using the Search Terms functionality and provide a list of the specific design elements which use the Search Terms values. This functionality can also be used to identify Notes databases with overlapping design in order to assist with the migration process by pinpointing design elements which may be able to be re-used during the migration process.
Using the Advanced Reporting features within Teamstudio Adviser and with its companion Adviser Data Extraction Utility you can quickly locate the “low hanging fruit” within each recommended action for the Notes Databases (migrate, archive, retire).
Migrate: These are Notes databases that have a very high level of ongoing usage that also have a medium to low complexity. These types of databases tend to be simple in their design or can be easily replaced with off-the-shelf solutions that can have their data directly imported into another platform.
Archive: These are Notes databases with a medium to low usage where the design is very complex. The information within these types of databases tends to be still valuable or is required to remain accessible for regulatory purposes. These are perfect examples of Notes databases that can be archived and still made available for Read Only access to their content. These types also tend to be good examples of Notes databases which are easier to re-create in another platform from scratch and reference the archived versions from within the new applications.
Retire: These are Notes databases which typically have no usage at all and contain no data which would need to be accessible for regulatory purposes. These types of databases tend to be the typical Discussion Forums, Teamrooms, or custom-built databases for internal use only.
Analyze
Teamstudio Analyzer is an application used to perform deep analysis of a Notes database’s design. It creates a fully documented representation of a database design within an additional Notes database where documents representing every design element are stored. From within this analysis database you can review the code within your target Notes database without ever needing to open the Domino Designer client at all.
With the analysis results you can begin researching the complexity of the Notes database in much more detail and without the need to jump between the various design elements that you are researching.
You can also see where there are references to the design elements throughout your design and where there are dependencies between design elements and even other Notes databases as well.
Using the information gathered by Teamstudio Adviser, you can now look at specific complexity issues and review areas that you warranted advanced searching by using the list of Search Terms you configured Teamstudio Adviser to search for. You can now start digging deep into the complexity of your Notes database designs to determine where the largest amounts of code migration will need to take place.
Teamstudio Configurator is an advanced Search and Replace tool for your Notes databases. With Configurator you can begin the process of locating and adjusting you existing design elements to assist in the migration of the design to another platform as well as preparing your data for migration into another system entirely.
Let’s say that during the Teamstudio Adviser process you discovered that there are areas within your Notes databases that reference existing Domino servers or even users by their name within the design of the code. You can also search for hard coded references to where the Notes database resides within the code in order to ensure that they perform real time determination of where the code should run. These would need to be modified prior to any attempt to migrate the code to another platform.
You can also use Teamstudio Configurator to prepare your data for migration into another system. For example, if you are migrating to another platform, such as Microsoft SharePoint, there may be a need to change the format of users’ names from what Notes provides (e.g. “CN=John Smith/O=Teamstudio”) to what is used in the system that will be migrated to (e.g. “brian@teamstudio.onmicrosoft.com”). If the application where the data will be migrated to uses these values for security access to the data then you can have it ready for immediate use within the new platform.
Archive
Teamstudio Export is an application which can make a high-fidelity archive of Notes databases in both XML and HTML formats. These archives can then be used for the long-term storage of the Notes databases for future reference, migration of the data within the databases into another platform and for the creation of a Read Only version of the Notes Databases.
Teamstudio Export can provide two separate and distinct archive formats:
XML Archive: The XML Archives can be used for two main purposes; 1. The long-term storage of the Notes database which can be re-imported into the Domino server environment if it is needed in its original format, 2. Using the XML files which represent the documents from the Notes databases for importing them into alternate platforms.
HTML Archive: The HTML Archive is a high-fidelity representation of the Views, Folders and Documents which are contained in the original Notes database. All of the indexed data from the Views/Folders are kept intact so that the end users will be familiar with the information. The HTML Archive also provides a near-to-same UI of how the documents appeared in the original Notes database. All of the data is searchable using the built in Full Text Search functionality provided within each HTML Archive.
The HTML Archives are created in such a way that they are self-contained and operate without the need for a web server of any kind. They are also created in such a way that they can be easily imported into another platform and secured within the new environment. Each HTML Archive contains both a HTML and ASPX file for viewing the HTML Archive in any web platform (e.g. HCL Domino, Microsoft SharePoint, Apache Tomcat, etc.)
Using the information gathered from Teamstudio Adviser it is a simple process of locating and archiving the Notes Databases which were discovered that can be archived.
There’s no doubt that application migration projects can sometimes seem like a waste of time and effort. But they can also be an opportunity to review your application portfolio, retiring old apps that are no longer used and cleaning up old data that is no longer needed. And, with some tooling and an organized approach, the task doesn’t have to seem quite so daunting.