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I have just been assigned a task by our Chief Software Architect and it involves migration. I am supposed to be building a data migration tool to help us migrate data from existing tables in an old database to a new database.

The challenge I have is, our Chief Software Architect has given me instructions in terms I don't quite understand and he is currently on leave. I would paste the instructions below what I need is someone who understands what he means to give me a clear explanation of what should be done and I can take it from there..

We need to create a data migration tool for when we launch the new product. Presently we only intend to migrate names, addresses and relationships from the old system to the new.

•	Study the NAMES table and work out a mapping for the names and addresses to the new database structure


I just need a simple explanation on what he means by
"work out a mapping for the names and addresses to the new database structure"
. PS: IN THE OLD DATABASE WE HAVE A TABLE CALLED NAMESTable.
Posted

1 solution

"Map" - something that can describe how to "travel" from 'A' (old database) to 'B' (new database)

It simply means "for each column in the old database NAMES table work out where that data would be stored in the new database structure". For example if olddatabase.NAMES has columns
ID, 
Name, 
AddressLine1, 
AddressLine2, 
ZipCode

but the new database has two tables NAME and ADDRESS then the mapping might be
old.NAMES.ID            --> new.NAME.ID
old.NAMES.Name          --> new.NAME.Name
old.NAMES.AddressLine1  --> new.ADDRESS.AddressLine1
old.NAMES.AddressLine2  --> new.ADDRESS.AddressLine2
old.NAMES.ZipCode       --> new.ADDRESS.ZipCode
old.NAMES.ID            --> new.ADDRESS.NameFK

Exactly how these "rules" are described, defined or used depends rather on the mapping tool you will be using. You may also need to consider some data transformation e.g. [Name] might have to be split into [FirstName] and [LastName]

I would suggest searching google for the term "Database Mapping" or "Data mapping" for further detail and, depending on which version of SQL you are using, do some research into SSIS or DTS (for older versions of SQL)

By the way, your Chief Software Architect writes instructions as if they were a college lecturer - quite strange that :-)
 
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Comments
Uzoma Umekwe 23-Sep-13 7:41am    
@CHill60 thanks for your help..It is clear to me now..and for my Chief Software Architect, the guy is weird.what else do you expect from some 1st class Computer science nerd :)

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