Data Migration

Conventional migrations

Large-scale migrations

With a large-scale consortium of collections such as a country-wide effort (“Country Consortium”), the SCC team is unable to provide the resources necessary for data migration of multiple institutions and collections. In such cases we suggest the Country Consortium hire in-house staff familiar with relational databases to lead and execute data migration to Specify. This “Migration team” would become expertly familiar with Specify’s data model, behavior and user interfaces, plus understand institutional collection data workflows, local user requirements, and expectations of the collections staff.

This Migration team would create a plan and a timeline for data migration, typically based on institutional priorities, legacy data quality, and data complexity and size. The Migration team would also be responsible for reviewing and cleaning data to be imported according to collection requirements and database settings, customizing the Specify application according to the collection requirements, and then importing data via Specify’s Workbench tool, Specify’s API, or with SQL scripts directly into the backend Specify database (MariaDB). SCC staff would work with the Migration team to choose specific processing options and methods for data migrations.

SCC technical staff will train a Point Person and Migration team involved in database setup and data migration to understand Specify at the Support level. These individuals should plan to allocate a week to visit SCC headquarters in Kansas. They will work one-on-one with SCC technical support staff and software engineers to attain a database administrator level of mastery. After the visit, SCC staff will continue to meet with the person or team as needed over Zoom to discuss questions and to research and resolve issues that arise.

Members are responsible for their staff travel expenses, the SCC will allocate staff time and project resources at no cost. SCC can facilitate meetings with other large national organizations who have undergone similar processes of assessing collections’ requirements, deciding on configuration and customization options, preparing data for migration, and importing data into Specify.

SCC has worked with several large-scale organizations in transitions to Specify, including: the Danish Natural History Museums, the Canadian Laurentian Forestry Centre, and the Australian federal government’s CSIRO. Each member has taken a custom transition to move to Specify based on technical expertise and desired outcomes.