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A Custom Approach to Database Migration

November 1, 2023
Neovera Team

A Custom Approach to Database Migration

Neovera develops custom parsing tools to help U.S. based organization migrate their critical applications and database systems to Oracle on Linux.

CLIENT OVERVIEW
As the nation’s trusted source for education verification and student educational outcomes research, this nonprofit organization has more than 3,500 participating colleges and universities, providing access to enrollment and degree records nationwide – encompassing more than 137 million students and growing.

THE CHALLENGE
Neovera was selected to migrate their systems from an Informix database backend to Oracle 11g. The Informix Oracle conversion project was launched in August 2008 and completed in January 2009. The project involved defining and provisioning a new hardware platform for Oracle database servers, which included the following requirements:

  • Defining and provisioning an Oracle architecture (RAC)
  • Defining and provisioning test and development Oracle databases
  • Data model migration from Informix to Oracle
  • Data migration from Informix to Oracle
  • Migration of Embedded C code to Pro*C
  • Migration of ASP code (SQL Conversion)
  • Migration of Java code (SQL conversion)
  • Migration of PowerBuilder code (SQL Conversion)
  • Architectural changes as needed, most notably:
    • Change in security architecture for Sentry database
    • Remote shell script invocation from database over the network

NEOVERA SOLUTION
Neovera worked with the organization’s personnel to migrate most of their applications and database systems to Oracle on Linux. This involved examining legacy “C”, Visual Basic, and Dot Net code. As part of this engagement, Neovera utilized the Oracle suite of database migration tools, but also developed a set of customized parsing tools to prepare the source code and the data for the migration.

BOTTOM LINE RESULTS
Neovera was able to identify and resolve code issues during the migration, as well as identify and provision new paradigms for architectural issues. Neovera successfully converted the billing application to run as a Pro*C program, and the billing application in Oracle DEV showed a 10x performance gain. The team also successfully translated and compiled member submission code and tested all the converted SQL in member submission related Pro*C files.