Genii Weblog

High quality conversion of Notes data as a service offering

Fri 22 Jun 2012, 10:46 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
After a few successful engagements with specific customers, I am starting to open the door a little wider to handling data conversion/migration on a consulting basis. For years, people have used the Midas Rich Text engine for high quality conversion to HTML and MIME, but I have additional tools to convert whole databases, validate/fix broken images, validate/fix broken links, etc. I am looking at working with customers who need this handled on a project or hourly basis, and who don't have the staff, expertise or inclination to work on the process in-house. Additionally, I have tools that I am not planning on releasing publicly which would be available for these conversions.

Targets for converted data would be:

a) XPages where higher quality rendering of Notes classic data is desired
b) migration of data to Sharepoint or SQL-based systems
c) snapshot migration of database(s) to HTML collection so that they can be delivered to a customer without Notes.

Happy to discuss with anybody interested. I am willing to collaborate with other consulting companies who need this to provide as part of a larger project.

Update: Wow, this has been better received than I expected as a new offering.

Copyright © 2012 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


1016.1. Dave Armstrong
(06/22/2012 04:10 PM)

I'd be interested in hearing more about exactly what you intend for migrating to SharePoint or SQL.

My engagements are almost 100% focused on planning and analysis of migrations, and I then pass the project on to a different team for the actual migration work. A service like this would play very nicely as part of that process, and would also help sales as the total package would be more of a full service.


1016.2. Ben Langhinrichs
(06/22/2012 04:20 PM)

There are a few different ways, but the option that has seemed most effective has been a CSV file approach where all (or all relevant) fields are rendered into the CSV, rich text fields are rendered either as in-line HTML or as separate files referenced in the column, and attachments/images are extracted and referenced by the HTML in the manner you choose.

This allows an easy import of the CSV to populate the data, and a separate sweep-up of the attachments/images as binary data.

All this is usually preceded by a validation step to ensure that links are correct and converted to a URL or other reference that you choose for Sharepoint or SQL system.

Some customers want a separate row for each attachment if they want to move to a Sharepoint document library. We can do that as well.