Implementation Highlights

• Client gained single, accurate view of data within their enterprise 
• Maintained high data reliability
• Extensive Pervasive connectivity saved $100,000

Benefits

Single View of Data - With a successful migration process, and systems synchronization, DNP gained an accurate view of critical data to successfully merge their business lines.

Cost Savings - The extensive connectivity provided by Pervasive gave ForeFront the additional options it needed to quickly complete the data migration without the need for additional tools and associated costs.  

Printable Format

Saving Time with Complex Database Integrations

Due to a company merger, Dai Nippon Printing (DNP), one of the world’s largest diversified printing and coating manufacturers, needed assistance moving critical data from its backend manufacturing systems to Exact Macola ES, an ERP solution. Systems Integrator ForeFront met the challenge, leveraging Pervasive Data Integrator’s universal connectivity to map complex data tables from JD Edwards ERP on a DB2 platform to Exact Macola ES. ForeFront set ongoing synchronization processes for daily transactions as well as migrating over 25 years of historical data. This integration of highly complex databases with obscure metadata was completed in just three months with high data reliability, giving DNP a single accurate view of the data within their enterprise.

Synchronize Data in Two Complex and Widely Different Formats and Migrate Historical Data

DNP needed to integrate manufacturing and financial systems. The project required moving data dating back to 1985 from a JD Edwards ERP which used a DB2 database to Exact Macola ES which used a dramatically different SQL Server database. The JD Edwards database was very complex with hundreds of tables identified numerically instead of with easily identifiable descriptors such as “product,” “inventory” or “customer.” This process was further complicated by the fact that the Macola database contained metadata written in Dutch.

The project presented an additional challenge. Migrating historical data through the Macola API without any disruption to existing Accounts Receivable (AR) and Accounts Payable (AP) information was virtually impossible without purchasing additional tools that would cost around $100,000.

ForeFront Leveraged Robust Pervasive Connectivity

The Pervasive schema mediation technology vastly simplified the otherwise tedious and time-consuming task of creating logical maps and resolving semantic conflicts between hundreds of huge tables that lacked logical naming conventions.

Anne Marie Berger, Managing Partner at ForeFront, commented on the difficulty with putting data in through the Macola API without disturbing existing AP or AR data. “Sometimes, we have to be very adept at moving away from the API that the application gives us and going behind the screens and putting in data in the database. We know that if we’re using Pervasive, we have all those different arrows to use. It’s not just, here’s a connector and this is the only thing you can use. You’ve got tons of different alternatives.”

Using the native Pervasive SQL Server connector, ForeFront successfully brought the historical data into Macola through the back end, with no disruption to the current AR/AP data, without spending an additional $100,000 on special import software.

Accurate Synchronization Migrations with Pervasive

Once the initial migration was completed, ForeFront used more traditional Macola API connectivity to establish daily batch transaction updates involving numerous business processes between JD Edwards and Macola.

ForeFront completed the one-time migration and set up the ongoing synchronization processes, moving more than 60 objects in just three months, far faster than their client expected. Data reliability remained high throughout the process and DNP gained an accurate, unified view of their enterprise data as a whole.