Database Redesign and Migration

Hi. I apologize if this post is off topic but it doesn't relate to any particular database, so I'm posting here.

I've come to work for a new (very small) company as an application developer. The legacy code that is here is rather poorly written and the database which provides the infrastructure is rather poorly designed.

Now the database is not really that complicated, so I think that can redesign it in a better way (new tables to store data rather than limit numbers of fields where there should not be limits, better naming conventions, etc.).

The problem is that redesigning will require a code re-write and will require our users to update and for us to do something to migrate their data. We are sort of looking at two options:

1. We can redesign the database all at once and slog through the re-write and migration or
2. We can redesign it a table or two at a time

It seems that 1) should allow us more flexibility in design. I've read a couple of texts that strongly suggest redesigning from scratch rather than making changes to the old database structure, but 2) should make the code rewrite easier.

I'm also not very familiar with data migration. Can anyone recommend a reference on that?

Thanks. Received on Tue Nov 21 2006 - 11:59:00 CST