A lot of work goes into a data migration, from developing and configuring the migration tools to building the migration process and executing the migration. During the migration, a critical step is for users to test the migrated data. Here we present data migration testing scenarios for users.

At xLM, we conduct extensive testing to review and analyze migrated data and check the migration logs for any issues.

We believe it is in the customer’s best interests to conduct data migration testing – after all, it is their data and they know it best.

This blog describes key scenarios the end customer should test. It’s important to use a planned set of files per case, including both clean new test data as well as real examples received from the business per case. Ensure you map all cases in advance (a CAD data analyst from the business should take care of this). Finally, it’s critical that various users from different functional areas of the company are involved in the testing.

    1. Make sure migrated data is searchable and returns correct results and browsable per a migrated structure, such as folder/bookmark or project/collaborative space structure.
    1. Validate that all metadata mappings are correct between the source (legacy data) and the destination (new) data. Metadata refers to the item properties, such as part number, revision, description, etc.
    1. Make sure you can open each type of migrated data file, such as part file, assembly file, drawing file, and non-CAD file types.
      1. If you have CAD files and you have an integration to your PLM, make sure you can open the data via the integration from the CAD system or directly from the PLM system.
      2. Verify any ‘dirty flag’ states indicating the file was modified. Investigate the root cause e.g., mismatching mapped attributes values, an older file version which was upgraded by CAD automatically, etc.
    1. Confirm that you can open large assembly files, that all linked data is valid, and that the assembly can open in a reasonable amount of time.
    1. Test to make sure you can open CAD data with different link types, such as In Context links, Base Part links, Mirror Part links, Design Table links, configurations, families, etc.
    1. Verify that you can open CAD data that uses standard parts, especially if the standard parts come from the specific stand library that is being managed differently from the design data. Confirm that you can use these standard parts in new assemblies.

In addition to confirming that you can open the migrated data, make sure that you can act upon the migrated data. You may need to:

      • Revise the data, such as Change states on the data, lock/unlock the data, check out the data.
      • Make changes to the data and save it back into the system.
      • Put the data through a workflow or change action to make sure it can be properly released into the system.
      • Revise the newly released data and verify that the revision history of the migrated data and the new data is appearing correctly.

As a final test, we recommend that users create new data and make sure migrated data can be properly referenced in it.

Following best practices in data migration, we suggest that users conduct these tests on a good sampling of migrated data. Users should not simply be asked to test the data but should be given this list of test cases to perform. The implementation team needs to allocate time and build the test cases to make sure all test scenarios are covered.

For large migrations, we conduct multiple test migrations and iterations to work out any migration issues. Users should conduct these tests for each migration, even after what might appear as a minor change to the migration code/process, which could have a big impact on the migrated data. We recommend that no last-minute changes are made to the migration code without building in time for proper testing.

We get it. Testing can be tedious. However, it is a critical step with any migration project and should not be taken lightly. At the end of the day, it is all about setting up a go-live that is as smooth as possible. With the proper testing, users will discover key issues and fix them before the go-live.

Upgrading to a new PLM system is stressful and disruptive to the end users, so we conduct extensive testing and validation on the data during the migration to deliver the best user experience with their new PLM system.

Read more about data migration:

Migrating data to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

3 Customer Successes: Complex Data Migration Projects

Best Practices in PLM Data Migration

If you’d like more information about data migration testing scenarios, contact us.

 

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