This IBM® DB2® for Linux®, UNIX®, and
Windows® porting Web site provides you with the information you need
to port an application and its database from other database management
systems to DB2. The porting steps, which appear in the order that they are
commonly performed, are briefly described on this page. More detail about
each step can be found on the
Porting steps tab
above, or by selecting a step from below.
In addition to the technical information in this site, IBM customers and
business partners should visit the
Information for IBM customers
and
Information for IBM business partners
links (respectively) in the right-hand column of each page to find
additional links and information about porting assistance and resources.
Assessment Your first task is to determine what needs to be done and how long
it will take. This is best performed by a systematic analysis of each of
the following tasks that are needed, and by estimating how long each task
will take.
Planning the project After you understand the scope of the work, there is great value in
planning out each step in detail with the aid of a project plan. There are
a variety of tools (see the
Project Planning Tools section)
that can be used for planning a porting project. This section provides you
with a summary of how to approach the detailed tasks, dependencies, and
other information you need to plan out the work.
Education and training Before the porting begins, the staff involved in the project should
acquire DB2 training. This section shows you where to find the necessary
materials, courses, and other resources needed to bring the staff up-to-speed.
Configuring the development environment To prepare for the port, you will need to establish a development
environment consisting of equipment, operating systems, tools, and DB2
products that will be needed to complete the port. This section outlines
some of the tasks you'll need to address to get everything ready for the
work to begin.
Users, groups, and permissions Once your system administrator and database architecture specialists
have been trained in DB2 and the associated tools, you must create the
user and group accounts that will be used to access the database. You must
also assign the correct privileges and authorities to those accounts. This
section discusses these tasks and provides additional references.
Porting the database The first key conversion task is to replicate the structure of the
source database in DB2. In this section, learn about tools and processes
that make it easy to extract and migrate the structure of the database
from the source system to DB2.
Porting database application objects The contents of a database usually consist of more than just tables
of data. Objects containing programming logic, such as stored procedures,
triggers, and user-defined functions, must be converted as well, and often
require additional effort to port completely. This section, provides
information that can help in the conversion of these objects.
Additional database components and products Additional functionality (above and beyond what is provided by DB2
itself) is sometimes needed to adequately support your applications. This
section outlines various products and components (including information
integration, content management, business intelligence, Web integration,
replication, federation, high availability, and backup/recovery) that
you'll want to consider as part of the porting project.
Application modifications Sometimes application code changes are required due to differences
in SQL "dialect" implemented by the various database vendors. This section
describes this process in more detail.
Database interface modifications Standard database interface API (ODBC, JDBC, and so on) code usually
requires few adjustments to work with DB2. Much more difficult is the
handling of native or proprietary interfaces that have their own
proprietary functions. In these cases, you may very well need to re-write
the application code, interface code, or both. This section provides more
insight into this process.
Data migration After the DB2 database structure is created, it must be populated,
with at least test data. Each database system treats data types slightly
differently and offers different methods of importing and exporting data.
This section describes tools to make this job easier.
Performance tuning After the system is ported, you will spend time tuning it. You may
need to change the layout of data, add indexes, tweak performance knobs,
and sometimes makes changes in the application code. This section points
you to information and tools that will help in this process.
Maintenance strategy Once the port is complete, the next consideration is the maintenance
of the application and database. A maintenance strategy should ideally be
in place early in the development cycle, and the maintenance staff should
be involved in the port to ensure they have the necessary knowledge to
keep the application running well, even after the developers are
reassigned to other tasks. This section outlines some considerations you
should keep in mind when creating a maintenance plan.
Acceptance testing There is usually a way to determine when the port is ready to become
part of the production cycle. This section explores ways to set criteria
so that there is a good level of comfort within your organization as to
the readiness of the port when it is time to go "live".
Documentation Part of the port must include detailed documentation of the
application and database changes that were needed. The plan for
documentation should be established early on, and be monitored throughout
the port to make sure that adequate information is available to the
maintenance and support staff.
Packaging If the ported application will be sold in the marketplace, the
packaging of the various components will be necessary to ensure easy
installation, security, licensing, and so on. This will require teaming
with the manufacturing or release teams in your company. This section
provides some ideas about how packaging can be integrated in the porting process.
Support Maintaining the application and database is an engineering-oriented
process. Supporting the users of the system is usually performed by
individuals that are well versed in the product. As with the maintenance
staff, the support staff should be exposed to the porting work early and
be prepared to support the product as soon as it goes into beta or
production.
