Housing data unified form

Introduction

There are many different housing systems, each having its data organised in a different way. Each system holds similar data, but each has chosen how to store and organise it. The challenge facing any migration is how to organise the data to allow it to be transferred into the destination system. PickSoft have developed a unified data form to allow the data from any housing system to be presented in a common form. This common form allows the same process of mapping, review and acceptance to be performed on data from differing systems. The common approach allows a proven process to be used which has been carefully crafted to help eliminate many of the risks with any data migration.

Uses

The Housing data unified form has been used in many projects to migrate data to Orchard ArcHouse and also to extract data from Orchard ArcHouse. The same form can also be used on SDM, ArcHouse, Comino and HAMIS to provide common reporting across different systems within a group of Housing associations.

How it works

Data from the database of the source system is analysed and the appropriate data elements (fields) are identified. These data elements are combined as required. For example, the destination system may have the concept of a 'property type'. The property type field may have been defined to allow the property to be classified by house, flat, maisonette then by bedroom quantity, then in the case of a flat, the floor level. In the source system, the general type may be held in one data element (for example HOUSE, FLAT, GARAGE), another element may hold the number of bedrooms, and another element may hold the floor level. In the unified form, the data elements are combined in a consistent way to form one field i.e. 'FLAT', '2' bedroom, '5' floor might and up as '5 bed FLAT floor 5'.

Once in unified form, the data elements can be easily counted and a lot of the parameters needed can be easily deduced. This approach reduces the overall preparation required prior to a data migration.

Availability

The Housing data unified system is used by our consultants on any housing data migration or reporting project. There are currently no plans to provide the form as a separate product. The Housing data unified form has been successfully used with Orchard ArcHouse , HAMIS , SDM , Comino , Simdell/Libra as well as several bespoke systems.