Database Conversions

Database Conversions One of the most complicated and frightening tasks anyone can take on with any software is the conversion of data from one database to another. Taking data from one O’Neil Database and importing it into another for consolidation purposes is not a task to be undertaken lightly. The first thing to recognize is that this is an exercise in compromise, you are trying to achieve the un-achievable, therefore you have to make concessions and compromises along the way. The process itself is relatively simple, once you have done the preliminaries, but the devil here is in the detail. To begin with, you have to understand what you are not going to get, information such as activity and invoices cannot be transferred, but hard-core data, accounts, transactions, inventory and such can. Therefore, we have to compromise, you cannot have the activity, but the activity can be transferred to a supplementary database, and used for reference purposes, so you don’t lose it, it’s just in a different place. We tend to think of things like this as being too important, when in reality, until you try, you will find out that they are not as important as you first imagined. The biggest decisions that have to be made are generally in the area of alignment of data. One of the primary reasons for any consolidation or conversion is to have all your data aligned, so barcode lengths and accounts are in the same format. Here again, these must be compromise as it is unlikely that there will not be a conflict of data somewhere along the way. Increasing, or “padding” is one option, but the only one but probably the easiest, here, additional characters are added to increase the text length to the desired amount. This type of data manipulation is very common and marks the middle stage to any conversion process. Data conflicts can be resolved easily this way, but other ones are not so easy. Core functions of O’Neil software, the Object’s, Actions etc can be also changed in the middle stage, but require a methodical and targeted approach and they appear in so many places. The alternative is to change the destination and leave the import alone. Conversions can be a way to improve the set up of the business to allow greater revenue generation or improved workflow. Whichever way you look at it, if you decide to convert, it’s normally an exercise of short term pain for long term gain, allowing you company to grow and improve in ways a fragmented database structure would not.