Migration Process Tasks

The upgrade and migration process encompasses the following tasks.

  1. Understanding the reasons for migrating.

    The starting consideration point for migrating content from WebFOCUS 7 to WebFOCUS 8 can be for any of the following reasons:

    The reasons for migrating should always be in focus, so you can concentrate on meeting those requirements.

  2. Assessing user requirements. Establish business requirements by existing user community. The WebFOCUS 8 security model is a role-based system where you define rules on resources based on users, groups, and their roles. For more information, see the WebFOCUS Security and Administration documentation.
  3. Understanding WebFOCUS 8. User community (end users, developers, administrators) must be granted access to WebFOCUS 8 documentation and must be trained on WebFOCUS 8 usage to be able to evaluate its capabilities against those of WebFOCUS 7 to determine how it can meet their needs.
  4. Assessing WebFOCUS 7 applications. Perform a thorough assessment of what WebFOCUS 7 content really needs to be migrated and then discard unused content before migrating.
  5. Auditing WebFOCUS 7 applications. Run reports to identify reports that are unused or rarely used, so they can be discarded before migrating to WebFOCUS 8.
  6. Understanding what happens after migration. It is important to understand what happens to migrated content and security authorization information, so you can evaluate what migration and modernization approach meets business requirements.
  7. Evaluating resources.

    Software. Identify new or updated software that is required with WebFOCUS 8. Changes in software and new software required by WebFOCUS 8 is documented in the WebFOCUS and ReportCaster Installation and Configuration manual for your platform.

  8. Preparing the environment for WebFOCUS 8.
    • Install third-party software.
    • Install JDBC drivers for the WebFOCUS 8 repository.
  9. Choosing a migration approach. There are several migration and modernization approaches you can take when migrating content to WebFOCUS 8. These approaches are detailed in Migration Approaches.
  10. Choosing sample applications to migrate. It is important to choose a sample set of applications for evaluation that is representative of all applications to establish the time it takes to modernize, as needed. The time it takes to migrate and modernize these sample applications will be used in scheduling, so it has to be as accurate as possible to avoid rollout delays.
  11. Scheduling performance testing. Benchmarks must be conducted on migrated content to determine additional resources required by WebFOCUS 8.
  12. Planning the WebFOCUS 8 environments.
  13. Assessing the migration effort.

    Staffing for the migration effort can be from your organization or Information Builders Professional Services. You can contact your local branch representative for information on the Professional Services WebFOCUS 8 Modernization Assessments offering.

  14. Installing WebFOCUS 8. WebFOCUS 8 will need to be installed on all of the environments planned for the upgrade.
  15. Migrating applications.
  16. Modernizing applications.
  17. Moving applications across environments.
  18. Testing.
  19. Creating user documentation.
  20. Training users.
  21. Choosing a cutover approach. One of the decisions you will need to make as part of the upgrade is when to cutover from WebFOCUS 7 production to WebFOCUS 8.
  22. Building and implementing a migration plan. Detailing how each step in the upgrade and migration process will be accomplished.
  23. Creating a rollout schedule. The schedule should be reflective of how much time the migration will take based on the level of complexity and business needs. Create milestones for each step in the process from the initial WebFOCUS 8 evaluation to the production rollout.

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