DB2 Migration from Legacy Systems
Client: Louisiana Department of Corrections
Louisiana Department of Corrections implemented the DB2 migration by creating the DB2 Data Store as their first IT enterprise modernization. The department planned to extract the data from their existing Mainframe Mapper and Notes legacy databases and move the data to DB2 database as the basis for the enterprise “database of record” after going through the compete cycle of profiling, cleansing and transforming the legacy data for web-OLTP using IBM Information Server Suite of products as well as query and reporting using IBM Cognos BI tool.
The issue for the client was extracting the data from legacy hand written very old databases such as Mapper and Notes for different database objects/tables & applying rules on top of it to load data into DB2 Database. All this was targeted to be completed in limited budget and fixed timeline. In addition, the Information Server was deployed on Windows Operating system with limited resources sitting on a VMWare for which support model from vendors was not existing. As these were legacy databases parent/child relationship between tables was also not present. As a result this check needs had to be made in ETL code and records which did not meet the requirement had to be captured and emailed to Data Owners.
nFolks Data Solutions took this as a challenge and used IBM Information Server suite of tools provided by client by coming up with different solutions such as using the correct ODBC drivers as extracting data from legacy database was not easy with limited drivers supporting it partially. nFolks used a combination of Parallel and Server jobs as it was creating lot of processes on windows server & parallel extract or huge extract would break the connection with legacy databases Scripts were written to monitor the hanged processes & clean them frequently as the no of resources are limited. The data was also Unicode and special characters had to be handled carefully so that data retains its original form and loaded into DB2 database.
Following the implementation, the department made the process seamless. Programs & scripts written by nFolks Data Solutions made the process seamless and in time delivery of project within limited budget by addressing all issues which made the migration of legacy databases to DB2 database successful.