Extraction of Housing data.

Introduction

Most Housing projects that PickSoft are involved in are to replace an existing Housing management system. Often the systems being replaced have been used for many years are usually not using the most recent technologies. PickSoft have many years of experience extracting data from many different systems. The techniques and tools used by our team depend on several factors, all aiming to produce a reliable consistent result.

The objective

When PickSoft extract data from a system we aim to make the process repeatable. We intend to run the process very often to allow changes in the existing system to be seen in the new system as soon as possible. If we run an extraction regularly, we need the process to be reliable, consistent and need little human intervention.

In an ideal situation, data would be extracted from the existing system at night. The data would then be converted using the rules specified in the parameter mapping process and then loaded into the new system. This process has proved to have been highly successful.

What are the advantages of this approach?

There are many advantages to regularly 'refreshing' the data in the target system. The main ones are:

• The ability to see the effects of recent changes
• The ability to see new parameter values as they arise
• The ability to keep working with the existing system for much longer
• Changes to resolve issues can often be made in the existing system where users are comfortable and familiar.