Originally, Eclipse was supported by a MySQL database server, a small but fast GNU licensed database package available free for most major OSes. When the HABITAT site [link] was built to support the Information Technology and Informatics program, a more robust database server was required with support for foreign keys and Unicode data in index capable fields. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database server was chosen, but Oracle, Sybase, or many other robust commercial packages could have been used instead. The addition of a dedicated SQL Server to our infrastructure provided a more stable and secure environment for hosting the backend database for Eclipse, so the decision was made to migrate.

Because Eclipse was built on a J2ee platform application server, the database was accessed through a Data Source object. Because of this the migration was easy and quick. The data was copied from the MySQL database to SQL Server using the bundled Database Transfer Services tool. Once the data was in place and verified, the data source was redirected to point to the new location and the driver changed to suit the new server. It was not a completely straightforward task however, as some minor differences in the way the engines process SQL code caused errors on some pages, but those were found and corrected.

Once the finishing touches were being put on the project's first stages and the site content was being reviewed before release, it was discovered that there were some small discrepancies in the input of image data into the database. In order to manage the discrepancies, a new web administrative interface to the site had to be developed. This interface let the administrators view all the data for each book in use and the images associated with it. That way, any image associated with the wrong book record could be flagged and fixed. The process of identifying the erroneous images is still a long and detailed one, but the web interface makes identifying and implementing the changes much faster than they would be if done manually site-wide.