2.1 Migration planning

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Migration planning tasks include the activities before actually setting up the system and porting the database, database objects, and data. The planning stage is also a good time to consider items mentioned in 2.5, "After the port" on page 44. Section 2.5, "After the port" on page 44 introduces other DB2 offerings that can help meet the architectural needs of your project. For the purposes of migration planning, the major processes are:

Migration assessment
Understanding and choosing migration tools
Estimating
Planning the project

2.1.1 Migration assessment

Planning a migration begins with an assessment of the size of the project and an understanding of the resources that can be utilized.

Architecture profiling

An accurate profile of the system wide architecture is key to the success of the migration. The following questions provide a sampling of the considerations that require attention:

What best characterizes the workload type? (OLTP, OLAP/DSS)
What language is the application written in? (Java, C, C++, VB, C#)
What is the client target operating system and the version/release/FixPak number? (Windows NT SP2®, Browser Based, etc.)
What is the server target hardware platform? (IBM_Series, Compaq, HP, Sun, etc.)
What is the server target operating system and version/release/FixPak number? (Windows NT SP2, AIX 4.3, REDHAT LINUX 8.0, etc.)
What is the typical configuration of your database server? (Number of boxes, number of CPUs, RAM, and disks, etc.)

2.1.2 Understanding and choosing migration tools

Although a migration can be performed without the help of tools, IBM has created a tool that is specifically designed to make migration as simple as possible. The tool is introduced here and covered in detail in later chapters. There may also be special circumstances, which warrant the use of a third party tool in conjunction with the IBM DB2 Migration Toolkit.

IBM DB2 Migration Toolkit

The IBM DB2 Migration Toolkit (MTK) helps you migrate from Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase databases to DB2 UDB databases on any supported DB2 UDB workstation platform. This tool can be used to generate DDL scripts to create database objects like tables, indexes, views, triggers, stored procedures, and user defined functions. It also aids in moving data from the original system to DB2 UDB. For instance, the IBM DB2 Migration Toolkit can either connect directly to the source system and perform its own extraction of the DDL, or it can use a syntax valid SQL-PL/SQL script extracted by other tools. The MTK supports Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server, DBMSs, and MySQL conversion to DB2 UDB.

Other porting tools

There are a number of migration tools available to assist you in moving your database, application, and data from its existing DBMS to DB2 UDB. These tools and services are not provided by IBM, nor does IBM make guarantees as the performance of these tools:

ArtinSoft

Oracle Forms to J2EE. The Oracle Forms to J2EE migrating service produces a Java application with an n-tier architecture, thus allowing you to leverage the knowledge capital invested in your original application, preserving functionality and the "look and feel" evolving into a cost-effective, rapid, and secure fashion to a modern platform.
Kumaran

Kumaran offers DB2 UDB migration services for IBM Informix® (including 4GL), Accell/Unify, MS Access, Oracle (including Forms and Reports), Ingres, and Microsoft SQL Server.
Techne Knowledge Systems, Inc

Techne Knowledge Systems' JavaConvert/PB product is a software conversion solution that transforms PowerBuilder applications into Java-based ones.
Ispirer Systems

Ispirer Systems offers SQLWays, a database and data migration tool
Ascential DataStage

The DataStage product family is an extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) solution with end-to-end metadata management and data quality assurance functions.
DataJunction

DataJunction data migration tool provides assistance in moving data from Source Database to DB2 UDB. This tool accounts for data type differences, and can set various filters to dynamically modify target columns during the conversion process.

Modeling tools

There are a number of modeling tools that can help you capture the entity-relation (E-R) descriptions of your database. By capturing this information, you can then instruct the tool to transform the information into DDL that is compatible with DB2 UDB. A few modeling tools are:

Rational® Rose® Professional Data Modeler Edition

A database design tool that allows database designers, business analysts, and developers to work together through a common language.
CA AllFusion ERwin Data Modeler

A data modeling solution that helps create and maintain databases, data warehouses, and enterprise data models.
Embarcadero Technologies ER/Studio

ER/Studio can reverse-engineer the complete schema for many database platforms by extracting object definitions and constructing a graphical data model. Other tools are available for application development (Rapid SQL and DBArtisan).
Borland Together

Borland's enterprise development platform provides a suite of tools that enables development teams to build systems quickly and efficiently. Borland Together Control Center is an application development environment that encompasses application design, development, and deployment. Borland Together Edition for WebSphere® Studio offers IBM-centric development teams a complete models-to-code solution. Borland Together Solo provides an enterprise class software development environment for small development teams.

2.1.3 Estimating

An accurate estimation of the scope of project, resource needed and total migration cost requires knowledge of the products, applications, and migration experience.

The IBM MTK can be used as an assessment tool to determine the complexity of the migration. Using the MTK in this manner will simply reveal stored procedures or SQL that may require manual intervention. A working knowledge of the MTK is mandatory when using the MTK in this manner. Estimating the number of "man-hours" required depends on the skill level of those performing the work.

The cost of new RDBMS software and migration tools should be considered when estimating the project cost. The IBM DB2 Migration Toolkit is provided free of cost. DB2 UDB is priced significantly less the Oracle RDBMS. Contact your IBM Sales Representative for more details.

Training costs, such as DBA and end user education, should also be figured into your project plan. The recommended course for experienced DBAs is Fast Path to DB2 UDB for experienced relational DBAs, course code CF281. Go to the IBM Learning Services for more details:

http://www-3.ibm.com/services/learning/

Finally, hardware procurement must also be planned if your existing data server does not have the capacity to run the existing Oracle instance, the IBM MTK, and DB2 UDB.

The IBM Software Migration Project Office (SMPO) can provide porting estimates. Contact the SMPO at: http://www-3.ibm.com/software/solutions/softwaremigration/

2.1.4 Planning the project

Each project is different, but there are some factors that are a good indicator of the overall effort. For instance, for applications that frequently use stored procedures, the number and complexity of the stored procedures to be converted will greatly affect the length of the application port. The same applies to the use of special data types and large objects. Another area might be the use of times and dates (each DBMS uses at least a slightly different internal format and display technique). Physical requirements (use of raw and cooked disk areas, spaces, nodes, etc.) can also represent a large amount of work, especially if the data will grow significantly over time.

A porting plan can be as simple as a spreadsheet that lists the main tasks of the port and some of the associated information for each task (start date, end date, elapsed time, dependencies, who is assigned, etc.). There are also project planning tools (such as Microsoft Project, Primavera TeamPlay, and Primavera Enterprise) that are specifically designed to not only plan, but also track the project. These tools let you assign tasks to specific people (or roles), establish dependencies among the various steps of the port (for instance, you cannot start testing until you move the database structure and the test data), and chart the original plan against what actually happens.

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