Migrating E-commerce database applications to an enterprise Java environment

As technology evolves over time, a common problem is the migration of software applications from one technology base to another. This paper is a practical experience report based on IBM Net.Commerce to WebSphere Commerce Suite (WCS) migration. It identifies the problems and issues in the migration of applications using traditional database access (SQL) to applications using the Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) programming model, and presents a practical methodology in facilitating such migration. It also describes a tool built on this methodology that has been released on IBM’s alphaWorks site. From the experience so gained, this paper points to a number of future enhancement areas in the methodology and associated technology research.