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Last week I presented at the Western Australian Business Objects User Group. The topic was ‘Migrating from 6.5 to XI – Do’s, Don’ts and Best Practices’.

It was quite a high-level presentation that focussed more on best practices around how to undertake a migration, rather than how to use the Import Wizard and other technical information.

Some of the main points were:

• Point of view – a migration from 6.5 to XI entails a complete change in architecture. So you are going from one platform, to a different one. It is important to keep this in mind, because if you expect to apply a ‘service-pack’ type upgrade, then you will be sorely disappointed.
• Resources – plenty of good resources are available from both Business Objects and the BOB Forum, which can help you prepare for the migration. Hiring or consulting a BO Migration Specialist will also be worth the money. A Migration Specialist is a BO 6.5 Systems Administrator, a BO Certified Professional in BOE XI, and have undertaken additional training in migrations.
• Testing – it’s definitely important when going from 6.5 to XI, as the calculation methods have changed. This is even more of a necessity when converting to Webi.

Here is a link to the PowerPoint I presented. As I did a migration last week, and am doing one this week too, it seems I’m living and breathing migrations at the moment!

How have you found migrations? Are you hesitant to undertake one?

Well, it’s been a while since my last update – I went on holiday for two weeks, and we drove up to the north west of Australia.

Before I went away however, I sat the first exam for the Business Objects Certified Professional certification for Data Integrator – and managed to pass! Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like a training course will be released anytime soon to match the second BOCP-DI exam, and I’ve got lots of other stuff to look at, including doing the 2008 update to my BOCP-CR.

I’ve managed to volunteer to do a part on the next BOUG meeting, to talk on Migrating from 6.5 to XI. I’m going to talk (briefly) on best practices (like know XI), what to do in preparation and during the migration, and what not to do. The meeting is next week, 11th June.

One of things I’ll mention in the ‘what not to do’ section is the Content Search, which is packaged as part of the Productivity Pack with SP2. The Content Search indexes (runs) all the reports and universes. So, if you suddenly import 500 reports into the new XI system, and you don’t have any limits set on how many Deski reports can run at any one time (set in the CMC, under Deski Report Server), the service runs unchecked trying to index all the new reports and the system resources max out – definitely scary for your IT administrators.

Have you had any experiences like this with migrations?

Whew, I’m spent. I’m running a Data Integrator training course this week (started today) and I’m already stuffed – it really takes it out of you. Additional to normal training tired-ness, I had the misfortune of trying the new BO course which uses MySQL 5.0 instead of SQL Server. We had an issue with table owners that nearly stopped the course dead in it’s track. Luckily one of the students stumbled across the fix that let us continue.

Meanwhile, I’ve been mucking about on the laptop, trying out new things. I’ve discovered the following things:

• Flock browser is awesome if you’re an online social junkie, or even a Firefox fan – check it out if you can!
• http://folding.stanford.edu/ looks really cool on my PS3, but doesn’t work too well in Vista 64-bit…
• Twitter looks really cool, but I’ll need to find other friends who use it before it becomes useful – my user is joshyf
• Flock integrates seamlessly with del.icio.us in providing online favourites, so now no more stored favourites in my browser

Otherwise I did a 6.5 to XI migration last week that went really well (about 1,500 reports and 55 universes) that now just needs all the testing done.

In personal news, I found out the other week I’m going to be a dad, which is awesome news of course, and we’re both very happy. Luckily I have until the end of the year to get everything done, and get used to the idea of course!

Check out Flock. It’s cool.