Data migration
There is a difference between data migration and data integration activities. Data migration is a project by means of which data will be moved or copied from one environment to another, and removed or decommissioned in the source. During the migration (which can take place over months or even years), data can flow in multiple directions, and there may be multiple migrations taking place simultaneously. The ETL (extract, transform, load) actions will be necessary, although the means of achieving these may not be those traditionally associated with the ETL acronym.
External Data Representation
External Data Representation (XDR) is a standard data serialization format, for uses such as computer network protocols. It allows data to be transferred between different kinds of computer systems. Converting from the local representation to XDR is called "encoding". Converting from XDR to the local representation is called "decoding". XDR is implemented as a software library of functions which is portable between different operating systems and is also independent of the transport layer.