Notes database to MySQL (with CF?) / or how to get the NSF-datastructure

Question

hi,

I have a commercial ColdFusion application, running on a MySQL database. A possible new client has approached me, they have been working in a Lotus Notes environment (and their own database) for many years now. Ofcourse they want to migrate their data to my application, before making the move.

I'm trying to get a grip on how to get a thorough feeling of the data, structure and interdependencies in their current database-application. Are there any tools to see a database-structure (like in a RDBMS) of a NSF-file, or is there anyway to dump the structure using ColdFusion etc....I don't have any handson experience with Lotus Notes (I do in the meanwhile have a local Lotus client and their database).

I need a good startingpoint to be able to determine whether or not I can find a way to migrate the data.

Any ideas?? thanks Bart

Answer 1

To get at the data in Notes, a good option is to use NotesSQL which can be found here:

A quick overview of the Notes data structure is this: Notes is a document-centric database, with non-relational data contained within each document. Notes Databases (NSFs) contain any number of Notes Documents, which in turn contain any number of items that hold data. Each Notes Document can have a different set of items, and thus different data in it. While that sounds like a horrible mess, usually the documents have similar data based on the form used to create the documents.

This all leads to why there is no simple way to get data out of Lotus Notes. There are a few other options, which may or may not be useful depending on how much data you have to migrate.

I personally like using XML to extract data from Lotus Notes. You can do so by creating XML views within a Notes database. IBM has a tutorial that looks helpful.

Using Java or LotusScript, you can write code to extract data from the documents to any format you wish (CSV, XML, TXT, etc)

If it's not a lot of data, you may find getting the data into an Excel format is the simplest intermediary step. Long ago I wrote an add-in tool for exporting data from Lotus Notes to Excel, which may help you. Or you can use the "Edit > Copy Selected To Table" feature in the Lotus Notes client to copy what is visible in a Notes View to the clipboard, and then paste that into Excel. In that scenario, you'd want to edit the views so they show all the data you need.

I hope this helps!