How Accenture’s Data Modernizer Tool Accelerates the Modernizing of Legacy and Mainframe Apps to MongoDB

Julien Contarin and Francesco De Cassai

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As companies scale their MongoDB estates and apply them to more and more use cases, opportunities for deeper insights arise—but first come issues around data modeling.

The Challenge

It’s one thing to start modeling for a green field application where you have the ability to apply modeling patterns. But it’s a different matter entirely to start from an existing relational estate and take into account multiple data sources and their business requirements in an effort to create the ideal MongoDB data model based on explicit schema (table and relations) as well as implicit schema (access patterns and queries).

Unfortunately, this is a fairly common obstacle. Perhaps an application has been around for a while and documentation hasn’t kept up with changes. Or maybe a company has lost talent and expertise in some areas of a monolithic app. These are just a couple of examples that demonstrate how time consuming and error-prone this effort can be.

The Solution

MongoDB and Accenture are excited to announce a modernization tool which enables faster MongoDB adoption by accelerating data modeling. As part of its mainframe offload and cloud modernization initiatives, Accenture’s Java-based data modernizer helps companies arrive at a recommended MongoDB document data model more quickly and efficiently. Using this tool results in a faster operational data layer for offloading mainframes and faster implementation of MongoDB Atlas for migrating applications to the cloud while also transforming them. Accenture and MongoDB are long-standing strategic partners, and this investment is another addition to our joint customers’ toolkits.

“This modernizer is the right tool for teams who are focused on changing business requirements as they rethink their applications for the cloud. With on average 50% faster data modeling and 80% data model accuracy straight out of the tool, developers can work on modernizing instead of spending weeks figuring out the right data model to simply meet existing business requirements that have not been explicit.” (Francesco De Cassai)

How it Works

The modernizer analyzes access logs and relational schema from Oracle and DB2 databases, whether they’re powered by mainframes or not. This allows teams to obtain critical insights before kicking off development activities, thereby better informing the process.

Additionally, the modernizer combines the implementation of modeling patterns, development best practices such as document sizing (best, average, worst case), and naming conventions, while also providing confidence levels to predict the accuracy of the model it’s suggested. The tool combines Accenture’s deep expertise and lessons learned from numerous successful projects.

Our customers are investing in a new approach to managing data: Data as a Service & Data Decoupling. This strategic initiative focuses on consolidating and organizing enterprise data in one place, most often on the cloud, and then making it available to serve digital projects across the enterprise. MongoDB Atlas unlocks data from legacy systems to drive new applications and digital systems, without the need to disrupt existing backends as companies modernize and migrate to the cloud. With this tool and MongoDB capabilities, MongoDB and Accenture allow organizations to get the most out of their data.

Find out more about the MongoDB & Accenture partnership here.

Learn more about MongoDB’s Modernization Initiative.