Lotus notes to Sql server migration

Question

I am trying to find the solution for data migration from LotusNotes to Sql Server without using third part tool. However, I have found out that client already has a license for LEI. Can I suggest them to use LEI for migrating data from Lotus Notes to Sql server. Is it possible? I need some pointers on this Note it is not scheduled data syncronization..

Answer 1

I'm not sure LEI (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/enterpriseintegrator/) is the way to go. It was designed to allow data to be shared between Notes and some back-end database system. Note, I don't have any real experience with LEI so it very well may have some way to help you transfer data. My point is just that it wouldn't be my first choice since migrating data is not the primary purpose, from what I can tell. I also think it seems like overkill for a project that will likely require some manual interaction to fit the data into an RDBMS system.

Depending on the data you need to migrate, I would look to export the data out of Notes into Excel, and then pull it into SQL to fit the schema you've designed. You'll potentially save some headaches making this a two-step process.

Moving from a document-based database to a relational database will likely require some restructuring of your data. You may want to construct views in Notes that resemble the tables in your SQL database schema. You could then easily copy the views to Excel by selecting all the documents and clicking Edit > Copy Selected As Table, and then paste the results into Excel.

Another good option is to use the NotesSQL driver and pull data out via SQL Management Studio. This works great if you don't think there's any need to clean up the data in Excel before importing it.

Usually when moving data the one 'gotcha' will be around rich-text items. It's very difficult to export rich-text from Notes, and I usually recommend the Geniisoft Midas LSX for that. I haven't seen anything better (or even close) to what that tool can do. If you just need the text out of the rich text fields, though, the SQL driver does support extracting text-only from RT items.

Hope this helps!