Migrating multiple types of assets when using istool

If you are planning on migrating multiple InfoSphere® Information Server products as part of your migration process, you must consider the order in which you will migrate the products in order to obtain the best performance.

Before you start migrating multiple InfoSphere Information Server products by using the istool command-line, you must decide how you want to migrate your common metadata assets. You have the following options:
  • Use the istool import and export commands with the -all parameter, which is available in Version 11.3 and later. This transfers most types of assets with a single export command and a single import command. You can then use the istool commands for the several remaining types of assets as described in Moving all assets from one metadata repository to another.
  • Migrate all common metadata for the entire suite all at once by using the istool commands for each individual product. Migrating all common metadata before the product assets that depend on them can greatly improve the overall performance of exports and imports. However, a global export and import of metadata could include metadata assets you no longer need and this step could be longer than necessary because of the quantity of data moved. When you migrate the common metadata, you can include all data connections to the databases, data files, and data files folders that you are migrating, with the exception of data connections that are created in InfoSphere DataStage®. After you migrate all common metadata, then you can export assets for individual products, such as InfoSphere DataStage, InfoSphere Information Analyzer, and InfoSphere Business Glossary by using the istool commands for each individual product.
  • For the best performance, delete all common metadata assets that you do not want to migrate on your source computer and then migrate all the remaining common metadata assets by using istool. Review all common metadata assets that are used in the individual InfoSphere Information Server products and delete all assets that you do not want on your target computer. After you delete all the assets that you do not want to move, you can export all common metadata assets.
  • If you do not want to change your source computer, you can export and import all the common metadata and then delete what you do not want on the target computer before importing the product assets. The export and import of the common metadata might still be slow, but the import of the product assets will be faster with a smaller metadata repository. You can also use the istool filtering options to export only the metadata that you want. This is the most efficient option, but might require the generation of many istool commands to move the data.
  • Migrate assets for individual InfoSphere Information Server products by using the istool export and import commands for each product. Specify the -includeCommonMetadata option when you export to export all common metadata related to the individual products. If you migrate multiple products and specify the -includeCommonMetadata option, you might end up transferring the same common metadata multiple times, if the products use the same common metadata. This will slow down your performance.
After you determine how you want to export your data, you can start exporting assets for the individual InfoSphere Information Server products. You export assets from the individual products to archive files. Archive files can contain assets from multiple exports of multiple tools. For best performance, when you import from an archive file, or when you migrate assets of varying types in multiple archive files, run separate commands to import the following types of assets in the following order:
  1. Users and groups
  2. Common metadata
  3. InfoSphere DataStage and QualityStage® assets
  4. Reports
  5. InfoSphere Information Analyzer assets
  6. InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog registered asset types
  7. InfoSphere FastTrack assets
  8. InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog extended data sources
  9. InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog extension mapping documents
  10. InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog business glossary assets. In versions earlier than 11.3, these assets are created in InfoSphere Business Glossary.
  11. Custom attributes for InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog extended data sources and extension mappings. In versions earlier than 11.3, these assets are created in InfoSphere Metadata Workbench.
Asset types not listed can be imported in any order.