Migration execution

The migration tool migrates a source artifact to its appropriate N4 target. The typical source is AX-3.8 station backup .dist file. The output (target) is a station folder, in your Workbench User Home.

At the conclusion of the tool execution, you see these Source and Target locations listed:

09:31:37,355 INFO [migration] Completed Migration

Source: C:\niagara\niagara-3.8.111\backups\backup_Supvsr_141117_1707.dist

Target:C:\Users\John\Niagara4.x\<brand>\stations\Supvsr

You can then install this migrated station into the daemon User Home of Niagara 4 platform, for example the local platform if a Supervisor, or in a remote platform, such as the migrated station for a controller that has been converted.

Upon execution, the migration tool scans each folder and file in the backup recursively, and migrates each in turn as appropriate. Certain folders, such as the folder tree comprising the history database of a station, are handled separately.

 NOTE: Any environment files in the backup .dist that are outside of the station folder, for example, properties files in the AX platform’s !/lib folder, are not migrated. If you know of any that were edited from default values, and they still apply to N4 platforms, you may need to re-apply changed values in the platform after upgrading to Niagara 4 (however, do not copy entire AX files into the N4 environment). 

If desired, do this after installing the migrated station.

For each migrated artifact, the migration tool determines if a FileMigrator is registered to handle migrating that file type. If no special migrator is registered, the default migration is to simply copy the file as is from the source location to the target location.

In the case of BOG file migration, the BogMigrator opens the .bog file, and walks the XML element tree. For each element it encounters, it checks to see if there is a BogElementConverter registered to handle converting that type.

  • If no converter is registered, the type is simply passed through and re-encoded.
  • If a converter is registered, the converter is given the element to process.
  • If the element cannot be decoded, this is usually because the module that contains the type existed in AX but was removed for N4. In this case the element will be removed from the station.
  • In the case where the N4 equivalent module exists, the registry check provides a converter that can convert the obsolete type into the appropriate N4 type.