How do you transfer a Lotus notes database to sql?
My company is at the point right now where we want to switch from a lotus notes (r7) database to sql. With the switch we want to ensure that sql will have the same views and functionality as lotus notes. How can this be done?
More Questions From This User See All
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
as you know Lotus Notes is not a Relational Database. So, you need to rebuild that documents & fields with SQL model structure, like normalize it and assign primary key and joins, etc.
what I normally do is:
1) design the table structure, primary key, join relationship (database model in general)
2) create the export view for each table, match all the columns, rows, field format etc.
3) export each export views to either text or lotus 123 format (sorry, they still don`t have XLS or SQL format since Notes 1.0), you have to be very careful in this step, some special character (like French characters) may lost the accent if the format is not right, or the field length excess the spreadsheet limit (255 characters). You also need to watch out the number of exported documents, there is a limit in spreadsheet to hold maximum 32767 rows(if I remember correctly).
4) Import the data from either text or wks file to SQL.
to rebuild the views is not an issue as that`s what SQL good for, just do simple query will do (however, the categorized feature is something u need to refine it in your reporting tools)
This all do well EXCEPT the rich text field and multi-value field. you need to do special way to handle them.
I know many `managers` who not really know the technologies and just think changing from Lotus Notes to SQL can be done in just a flip of button and think SQL is a better database. however, it`s not, SQL and Lotus Notes are just 2 different data structure (like orange and apple), both have their pros and cons. SQL doesn`t flexible enough to handle rich-text, attachment, group-ware intergration, free forming, etc.
anyway, if u have any questions or need me to transfer the data for u, free feel to let me know.
i think that the instructions contained in distinctive reaction will quite do the backup/fix so your challenge is the bypass. are you waiting to compress/zip the exported information and then bypass them applying FTP etc. it particularly is what we used to do in this occasion as rapidly as we had great databases to bypass which contain those bigger than 5GB. 5GB could desire to be classed as small in my journey.