The PLM State: It’s a Wrap: Putting a Bow on SolidWorks World 2011

Migration Madness - Best Practices: History is Best Forgotten

The next best practice  is that history is best forgotten. George Santayana wrote that, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it". Obviously George was never involved in data migration. The saying for data migration would be, "Those that forget the past get to keep their jobs." When migrating data less is more. Some companies have no choice in bringing older data over because of their industry or business model but most companies rarely access data that is in previous versions. One of the challenges with history is that legacy and target systems may lack the capacity to import and export revisions and versions or older workflows. Another problem is that some older data was created prior to PDM and PLM systems and may lack the structure to be useful in a modern system. The most basic issue is the sheer volume of information you are moving. This hinders the ability to effectively test and filter to ensure the quality of information going into the new system. In the end requiring history adds significant complexity to a data migration project and given how infrequently the data is accessed it may not be worth the extra time and money. If at all possible keep the legacy system in sustaining mode with a virtual machine and access the data as needed. You may be surprised how few times anyone goes back to the old system.