the policies or not altered at all 0019 fig2 shows the data structure 300 that specifies the rules associated with policies the data structure is populated by reading a configuration text file that is distributed with the migration assistant application the data structure consists of four fields u2014 1 name of the application 2 application directory 3 data directory and 4 extensions of the data files associated with the application 0020 fig3 shows the flowchart for the migration assistant to perform migration based on customizable policies such as it best practices when the migration assistant software is first u201c launched u201d on the source machine it initializes its policy database data structure and reads the rules from the configuration file specified in fig2 the rules contained in the rule database describe how the applications and data files should be migrated this information includes but is not limited to prerequisites for migration and migration policies that may be established beforehand by company guidelines or directives these policies are set or modified by a policy editor that is not part of this invention a policy could be applied to a single object or a group of objects a policy might state for example that the xyz application should be upgraded to version 1 7 and that in order to run that version the operating system must first be upgraded to version 5.