EFFECTIVE DATABASE MIGRATION STRATEGY - THE NEED FOR ADDRESSING DATABASE MIGRATION CHALLENGES OF TODAY, TOMORROW AND BEYOND

Database migration is considered to be a least priority activity in software industry. This is a wrong perception as database migration in reality becomes a nightmare to many who have experienced it. As the migration process starts to the new target system, migration issues crop up which pile up gradually and become unmanageable during the migration process. That is why to eliminate the migration issues require highly effective database migration strategies. There are several papers where migration strategies have been mentioned, and there are a number of tools those have been developed for successful database migration, yet database migration issues still persists and organizations find it difficult to adapt an effective migration strategy. Organizations spend enough in purchasing tools to do the migration. By the time one realizes that the business is suffering after the post migration, it is too late. A huge amount is spent in the repair process. This is not because of lack of migration strategy, rather lack of effective migration strategy. For example: Using a migration tool can be a strategy, however before that an assessment is required to find out how much percentage of tool can do and how much percentage required to build in-house tools, how would the database behave after migration etc? Such analysis are lacking in today's migration strategy. This paper proposes an effective approach towards database migration to address migration assessments, the migration issues, also improvising reusability.