The key question

The target architecture must support the business flow. Converting objects does not answer where business logic belongs, who may call it or how failures are recovered.

What to inventory

  • Map applications, data ownership and critical business processes.
  • Document read and write paths including external systems.
  • Define availability, recovery and operational ownership.

Design the target deliberately

Separate data model, interfaces, background processing and operational functions. Define the schema and role model before copying individual grants. Test pooling, connection counts and transaction boundaries with the actual application.

A concrete validation step

Keep an architecture decision record

For each decision, record the requirement, chosen option, rejected alternative and outstanding evidence. That preserves the reasoning behind the target design.

Evidence required before sign-off

  • Run one end-to-end business process on the target.
  • Test privileges without an administrative test role.
  • Prove backup, restore and failover in the application context.
  • Hand monitoring, alerting and escalation into operations.

Primary sources & further reading

These recommendations are engineering guidance. Specific options depend on source and target versions, privileges and operating model.