Updated 18 March 2024
Getting started with a new data management system requires planning and a key part of that is the migration of your data.
The BRAHMS team has many years of experience migrating data from a wide variety of stores - examples are MS Access, Excel spreadsheets, DBF files, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL and other bespoke database systems. As part of the migration process, we also check data integrity and, where possible, help standardise your data.
For users with BRAHMS v7 databases, a function is provided to auto-migrate your data to v8.
"We have been using BRAHMS v7 for many years now and were delighted to see how easy it has been to transfer our dataset over to the new v8." (Tim Pearce, RBG Kew Millennium Seed Bank Partnership)
Free sample migrations
We can usually offer a free test migration of your data. This would generally be a fast and partial migration allowing you to evaluate BRAHMS using your own data. Your data are normally returned to you in an XML folder - and these data can then be imported to the data store of your choice.
Full data migration service
The vast majority of data migrations, even for larger instuitutions, are straightforward and we can provide a migration plan which guarantees a limit of 5 days of costed work. For small or new projects where you have limited data in flat files (e.g. lists of records in an Excel spreadsheet), we would normally migrate these data free of charge.
When data are provided for migration, it helps if you send us documentation as follows:
How to provide and send data?
Many projects submit data in csv or xlsx formats. However you can send data in MSSQL Server, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, CSV, Excel, MS Access, DBF or clearly delimited txt tables. As long as we can open the data tables you send us, we can work with that. Projects typically transfer archived files to us using https://wetransfer.com/ - although you can use dropbox or your preferred institutional data transfer option.
For all further details on data migration, please contact Oxford University Innovation - brahms@innovation.ox.ac.uk.