Can records item and their metadata be transferred from an Alfresco or Constellio system to an Atom system?

[محمود محمد‎]

The query here is:

              Is there a mechanism that can be applied to transfer records in the same order, symbols, and metadata from document and records management systems such as Constellio system, for example, and records and archive management systems such as Atom system, or integration between them. Such as the integration of Atom with the Constellio system, the integration of Atom with the OpenKM system, the integration of Atom with the Alfresco Software system, and so on.

Thank you for your interest.

Mahmoud Mohamed Abdel Alem

[David at Artefactual]

Hi Mahmoud,

I'm not familiar with the Constellio or Alfresco Software systems, but I have done many data migrations from other archival management systems to AtoM.  Data migrations tend to be large, complex projects for several reasons:

• The ability to export data from the source system is often limited
• The ability of AtoM to import data is also limited
• The data and metadata structures of the source system and AtoM are never the same, meaning the data must be mapped from the source to target system, and the data mapping is never 100% accurate due to the differences in data structure
  
• There are often errors in the source data that make the data migration more difficult
• There is often a large amount of data to be migrated which makes the migration and quality assurance processes time consuming

That said, there are several possible mechanisms for importing data into AtoM:

1. AtoM can import a variety of data types via CSV import.  When we at Artefactual do a data migration project, CSV import is usually our first choice due to the flexibility afforded with a minimal amount of programming.
2. AtoM also supports import of data via several XML document standards.  AtoM's XML imports support fewer data fields then CSV import, and tend to be less flexible for data transformation.
   
3. AtoM has a REST API that can be used for integration with other systems, but the API only exposes a very limited subset of the the data fields in AtoM, much less than either the CSV or XML import features.
4. AtoM uses Percona Server (based on and compatible with MySQL Server) as a database management system. Percona is open source and is open to inspection and manipulation of the data schema and data stored.  It is possible with various SQL tools to directly add, edit and read all data in the AtoM database, but this will involve writing custom code to transform the data from the source structure to AtoM's data structure and then load the data to AtoM.

It's entirely possible for you to migrate data from Constellio or Alfresco to AtoM yourself with the above tools, but if you require paid assistance Artefactual Systems (my employer) does provide data migration services for AtoM.

Best regards,

David Juhasz (he/him)

Senior Developer
Artefactual Systems