Artifact migration

Artifact migration uses a parallel target production environment that is configured differently from the source production environment. You import the applications from the source production environment into development tools and migrate the applications using the migration procedures of the development tools.

When to use artifact migration

With the artifact migration process, you create a parallel target production environment that is configured from scratch differently from the source production environment. Artifact migration results in applications whose artifacts are migrated to the new version, enabling the applications to be modified to use the new capabilities delivered by the new version of IBM® Business Process Manager. The application can then be tested and deployed to the parallel target production environment. When the applications are deployed to the target production environment, they create a new set of database tables, so they do not have access to the application data stored in the databases configured for the source production environment.

Artifact migration is supported for migration from the following products:
  • IBM BPM Advanced V7.5 or V7.5.1
  • IBM BPM Standard V7.5 or V7.5.1
  • WebSphere® Process Server V7.0.0.x or V6.2.x
  • WebSphere Lombardi Edition V7.x
  • WebSphere Lombardi Edition V6.x
Use the artifact migration method in the following scenarios:
  • You want to use the development tools and development environment to migrate the application artifacts to the new version and validate the compatibility of your applications.
  • You want to use the development tools to update your applications to use new capability delivered by IBM Business Process Manager.
  • You want to reconfigure your topology as part of the process of migrating to the new version of IBM Business Process Manager, or you can manually duplicate your source production environment configuration in your parallel production environment.
  • You do not have long-running process instances and human tasks, or you can run parallel production environments while you drain the process instances and human tasks in the source environment as new instances are started in the target production environment.
  • You have application data in queues or failed events in product databases that were created in the source environment that can be managed to completion in the source production environment while new messages and events are routed in parallel to the target production environment.
  • You cannot incur any downtime in your production environment and can concurrently manage parallel source and target production environments.
  • You want to selectively migrate applications from your source production environment to the new version of IBM Business Process Manager with the development tools and selectively deploy those applications to your target production environment.

Benefits

Artifact migration provides the following benefits:
  • Ability to use new features
  • Parallel production environment supported:
    • Selective application migration
    • No downtime
  • Ability to perform extensive testing before migrating to production environment
  • No dependency on migration tools

Costs

Artifact migration incurs the following costs:
  • New development environment is required
  • Existing data is not moved; new database tables are used
  • Manual (scripted) deployment of applications is required
  • Requires updates to client applications
  • Hardware and software licenses might need to be evaluated for any additional licenses required when running in parallel.
  • Additional test coverage for application updates is required.

Risks

Artifact migration involves the following risks:
  • Application updates might require some level of testing

High-level tasks

Artifact migration includes the following high-level tasks:
  1. Install the new product version.
  2. Configure your parallel production environment.
  3. Import the applications from the source production environment into development tools and migrate the applications using the migration procedures of the development tools.
  4. Optional: Update the migrated applications to use new capability delivered in IBM Business Process Manager.
  5. Manually deploy the migrated applications from the development tools to the target production environment.
  6. Optional: Run both environments in parallel so that business process instances and human task instances that are in progress finish in the source environment and new instances start in the target environment.
Parent topic: Migration methods