DISCOVERY-BASED MIGRATION CORRECTNESS TESTING

• US 20120204149A1
• Filed: 02/03/2011
• Published: 08/09/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/03/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Joukov, Nikolai A., Pfitzmann, Birgit M.
• Application Number:
  US13/020,525
• Publication Number:
  US 20120204149A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/121
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/302 where the computing system component is a software system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3051 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management

Abstract

Software components migrated from a source server to a target server may be compared before and after a migration. In one aspect, discovery tools may be used to discover the source server'"'"'s configurations before the migration. Similarly, discovery tools may be used to discover the target server'"'"'s configurations after the migration. A migration design or plan may be applied to the discovered source server configurations to generate a desired target server configuration. The desired target server configurations may be compared with the discovered target server configurations. Deviations or differences between the discovered target server configurations and the desired target server configurations may be determined. A database of common or typical changes, which might not be specified in the migration plan, may be used to identify the common changes that occur as part of a migration process, from the deviations.

Claims

1. A method for discovery-based migration correctness testing, comprising:

discovering, using one or more processors, source software components, configurations of the source software components of a source system, and one or more dependencies between the source software components;

discovering, by one or more processors, target software components, configurations of the target software components of a target system, and one or more dependencies between the target software components;

comparing using a recorded migration design, the configuration of the source software components of a source system with the configuration of the target software components of a target system, and the one or more dependencies between the source software components with the one or more dependencies between the target software components; and

determining whether one or more deviations exist in the configuration of the target software and/or in said one or more dependencies between the target software components, from a desired migrated target as specified in the recorded migration design.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of comparing using a recorded migration design includes applying the recorded migration design to the discovered configuration of the source software components of the source system to generate the desired migrated target, and comparing the desired migrated target with the discovered configuration of the target software components of the target system.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of comparing further includes automatically checking that said one or more dependencies between the source software components also exist between the target software components.

4. The method of claim 1, further including storing results of the comparing step.

5. The method of claim 1, further including presenting the one or more deviations in response to identifying the one or more deviations in the step of determining.

6. The method of claim 1, further including in response to determining that said one or more deviations exist, filtering said one or more deviations by removing one or more commonly occurring changes from said one or more deviations.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said one or more deviations include one or more changes in the recorded migration design that are not specified in the discovered configuration of the target software components, or one or more changes in the discovered configuration of the target software components that are not specified in the recorded migration design, or combinations thereof.

8. The method of claim 1, further including in response to identifying the one or more deviations in the step of determining, triggering additional migration steps to modify the configuration of the target software components to make it like that of the desired migrated target.

9. The method of claim 1, further including, in response to identifying the one or more deviations in the step of determining, using the determined one or more deviations to identify one or more problems in a migration tool and improve the migration tool.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the recorded migration design is represented as a data model with pointers cross-referencing said one or more source software components and corresponding said one or more target software components.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein said data model is in XML format, a database, a spreadsheet, unified modeling language (UML), or combinations thereof.

12. A system for discovery-based migration correctness testing, comprising:

a processor;

a discovery module operable to discover source software components, configurations of the source software components of a source server, and one or more dependencies between the source software components, the discovery module further operable to discover target software components, configuration of the target software components of a target server, and one or more dependencies between the target software components; and

a comparison module operable to compare, using a migration design, the configuration of the source software components of a source server with the configuration of the target software components of a target server, and the one or more dependencies between the source software components with the one or more dependencies between the target software components,

the migration design including a plan of what elements of the source server should remain the same in the target server, and what elements should change in the target server,

the comparison module further operable to determine whether one or more deviations exist in the configuration of the target software and/or in said one or more dependencies between the target software components, from a desired migrated target as specified in the recorded migration design.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the comparison module is operable to apply the migration design to the discovered configuration of the source software components of the source server to generate a desired target, and further compare the generated desired target with the discovered configuration of the target software components of the target server.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the comparison module is further to automatically check that said one or more dependencies between the source software components also exist between the target software components.

15. The system of claim 12, further including a database storing common changes occurring in migration of one or more software components, and wherein the comparison module in response to determining that said one or more deviations exist, is further operable to filter said one or more deviations by removing one or more commonly occurring changes from said one or more deviations.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein said one or more deviations include one or more changes in the migration design that are not specified in the discovered configuration of the target software components, or one or more changes in the discovered configuration of the target software components that are not specified in the migration design, or combinations thereof.

17. The system of claim 12, wherein migration design is represented as a data model with pointers cross-referencing said one or more source software components and corresponding said one or more target software components.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein said data model is in XML format, a database, a spreadsheet, unified modeling language (UML), or combinations thereof.

19. A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of discovery-based migration correctness testing, comprising:

discovering source software components, configurations of the source software components of a source system, and one or more dependencies between the source software components;

discovering target software components, configurations of the target software components of a target system, and one or more dependencies between the target software components;

comparing using a migration design, the configurations of the source software components of a source system with the configurations of the target software components of a target system, and the one or more dependencies between the source software components with the one or more dependencies between the target software components; and

determining whether one or more deviations exist in the configurations of the target software and/or in said one or more dependencies between the target software components, from a desired migrated target as specified in the migration design.

20. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the step of comparing using a migration design includes applying the migration design to the discovered configuration of the source software components of the source system to generate the desired migrated target, and comparing the desired migrated target with the discovered configuration of the target software components of the target system.

21. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the step of comparing further includes automatically checking that said one or more dependencies between the source software components also exist between the target software components.

22. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, further including in response to determining that said one or more deviations exist, filtering said one or more deviations by removing one or more commonly occurring changes from said one or more deviations.

23. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein said one or more deviations include one or more changes in the migration design that are not specified in the discovered configuration of the target software components, or one or more changes in the discovered configuration of the target software components that are not specified in the migration design, or combinations thereof.

24. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the migration design is represented as a data model with pointers cross-referencing said one or more source software components and corresponding said one or more target software components.

25. A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of discovery-based migration correctness testing, comprising:

receiving data discovered associated with source software components to be migrated from a source server to a target server, the data associated with source software components including at least configurations of the source software components of the source server, and one or more dependencies between the source software components;

receiving data discovered associated with target software components corresponding to the source software components migrated to the target server, the data associated with target software components including at least configurations of the target software components of the target server, and one or more dependencies between the target software components;

comparing using a migration design, the configurations of the source software components with the configurations of the target software components, and the one or more dependencies between the source software components with the one or more dependencies between the target software components; and

determining whether one or more deviations exist in the configurations of the target software and/or in said one or more dependencies between the target software components, from a desired migrated target as specified in the migration design.