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.
Schema migration
Most schema migration tools aim to minimize the impact of schema changes on any existing data in the database. Despite this, preservation of data in general is not guaranteed because schema changes such as the deletion of a database column can destroy data (i.e. all values stored under that column for all rows in that table are deleted). Instead, the tools help to preserve the meaning of the data or to reorganize existing data to meet new requirements. Since meaning of the data often cannot be encoded, the configuration of the tools usually needs manual intervention.