Will Redesign Migrate All "Archived" Data from the Classic System?

Summary Answer:

No.  The USxS Redesign migration process will only extract from the district's current operational data files (i.e. "live files").   These files typically contain between two and ten years of historical data (depending on local ITC policy).   The Redesign projects will import all relevant data from the current files.  But it can not import data from historical copies of data files being used as archives. 

Detailed Answer:

Background

Typically, most ITC's maintain historical copies of USxS (and others systems).  These "snapshots" of the data are generally taken at the end of the fiscal or calendar year.  Users at each ITC have a method of "switching" into a particular archive, either by menu option or an alternative username.   Because these are complete snapshots, they contain a complete copy of all current and historical transactions at the time of the snapshot.

Migration Difficulties

There are several difficulties with attempting to migrate snapshots of historical data into a Redesign operational database:

• Archived data files may be in a different format (older version) that the current files.  When a user switches into an archive, they may also be switching into a different version of Classic USxS.  The SSDT does not provide Redesign export routines for these older version of the software (nor is it practical to do so).  Therefore, in order to import archived data, the ITC would have to convert all archives into the latest version of the software.  

• More importantly, because historical records are not present in the current files, it is very likely that duplicate transaction numbers (check numbers, purchase order number, etc) and duplicate identifiers (vendor numbers, employee numbers, etc) exist in both the current files and multiple.  There is insufficient information in the Classic systems to determine reliably if a record with an identical identifier is actually the same transaction or a duplicate record.

Due to these difficulties, it would be impossible to merge historical archives into an operational database.  Doing so would likely result in a corrupt Redesign data set which could never balance or be internally consistent.