This guide is for engineers, consultants, and others who want to use the Migration Toolkit for Applications (MTA) to migrate Java applications or other components. It provides an overview of the Migration Toolkit for Applications and how to get started using the tools to plan and execute your migration.

The Migration Toolkit for Applications (MTA) provides a number of capabilities to assist with planning and executing migration projects.

The Migration Toolkit for Applications (MTA) contains rule-based migration tools that analyze the APIs, technologies, and architectures used by the applications you plan to migrate. In fact, the MTA analysis process is implemented using MTA rules. MTA uses rules internally to extract files from archives, decompile files, scan and classify file types, analyze XML and other file content, analyze the application code, and build the reports.

MTA builds a data model based on the rule execution results and stores component data and relationships in a graph database, which can then be queried and updated as needed by the migration rules and for reporting purposes.

MTA rules use the following rule pattern:

when(condition)
  perform(action)
otherwise(action)

MTA provides a comprehensive set of standard migration rules out-of-the-box. Because applications may contain custom libraries or components, MTA allows you to write your own rules to identify use of components or software that may not be covered by the existing ruleset.

If you plan to write your own custom rules, see the https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/migration_toolkit_for_applications/5.0/html-single/rules_development_guide in Rules Development Guide for detailed instructions.

The Migration Toolkit for Applications (MTA) supports migrations from third-party enterprise application servers, such as Oracle WebLogic Server, to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) and upgrades to the latest release of JBoss EAP.

MTA provides a comprehensive set of rules to assess the suitability of your applications for containerization and deployment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. You can run an MTA analysis to assess your applications' suitability for migration to multiple target platforms.

The following table describes the most common supported migration paths.

The CLI is a command-line tool in the Migration Toolkit for Applications that allows users to assess and prioritize migration and modernization efforts for applications. It provides numerous reports that highlight the analysis without the overhead of the other tools. The CLI includes a wide array of customization options, and allows you to finely tune the MTA analysis options or integrate with external automation tools.

For more information on using the CLI, see the MTA CLI Guide.

The web console for the Migration Toolkit for Applications allows a team of users to assess and prioritize migration and modernization efforts for a large number of applications. It allows you to group applications into projects for analysis and provides numerous reports that highlight the results.

For more information on using the web console, see the MTA Web Console Guide.

The IDE plugin for the Migration Toolkit for Applications provides assistance directly in Eclipse and Red Hat CodeReady Studio for developers making changes for a migration or modernization effort. It analyzes your projects using MTA, marks migration issues in the source code, provides guidance to fix the issues, and offers automatic code replacement when possible.

There is an MTA extension for Visual Studio Code and Eclipse Che. The extension is only available as a Minimum Viable Product and will be fully documented and supported in a future Release of MTA. For more information about the extension, visit the Visual Studio Marketplace.

For more information on using the IDE plugin, see the MTA IDE Plugin Guide.

The Maven plugin for the Migration Toolkit for Applications integrates into the Maven build process, allowing developers to continuously evaluate migration and modernization efforts with each iteration of source code. It provides numerous reports that highlight the analysis results, and is designed for developers who want updates with each build.

For more information on using the Maven plugin, see the MTA Maven Plugin Guide.

Many organizations are faced with the challenges of keeping their existing business operations running, while also trying to innovate. There are typically increased expectations to deliver new functionality faster and to reduce cost.

When assessing a migration or modernization effort, it is important to address the challenges that are specific to your organization. Common challenges that organizations face are limited budgets, lack of in-house skills, perceived risks, no known predictable process, and accurate effort estimation in a timely manner.

In general, the goals when assessing a large-scale middleware migration or modernization effort are the following:

Red Hat has developed a strategy to minimize risk and make application migration and modernizations more efficient.

Red Hat has defined a strategy to make large-scale application migrations to Red Hat JBoss Middleware quantifiable, less costly, less risky, and easier to complete.

Migrating from proprietary or outdated middleware platforms to Red Hat JBoss Middleware gives you lightweight, modular, and cloud-ready middleware with a supporting application infrastructure to make teams more productive. JBoss Middleware and other Red Hat technologies also provide great opportunities to modernize your application development and delivery, allowing you to innovate more quickly.

5.2.2. Methodology

Red Hat’s recommended methodology is a proven, scalable approach that helps you to incrementally plan and conduct a migration or modernization.

Figure 5.1. Red Hat migration methodology

The approach consists of the following phases:

Discover

Explore the technologies and identify concerns, organization requirements and challenges. Discuss options and potential approaches.

Design

Identify and mitigate the biggest risks from an application, infrastructure, process, and knowledge perspective. Establish a strategy for the solution. Prove the technology and build the business case.

Deploy

Scale the modernization or migration iteratively by executing the previously defined strategy according to a well-defined delivery model.

5.2.2.1. Discover phase

Figure 5.2. Red Hat migration methodology: Discover phase

The Discover phase is when you gather all stakeholders and decision-makers together to understand the current state and business drivers, and to determine the migration or modernization needs.

In this phase, you explore technologies and discuss potential approaches. Identify the existing pain points, concerns, requirements, and some potential challenges. Define the high-level business priorities and scope the assessment. Determine in what ways you want to modernize your application development and delivery to allow you to innovate more rapidly.

Typically, this can be covered in a day in a workshop with Red Hat experts.

5.2.2.2. Design phase

Figure 5.3. Red Hat migration methodology: Design phase

The Design phase is when you identify all risks, define a strategy and target architecture, prove the technology, and build the business case. This phase consists of the following steps:

Assess

Examine the existing infrastructure, architecture, technologies, and applications. Identify dependencies, knowledge, processes, and lifecycles. Define the desired infrastructure, architecture, technologies, and applications. Determine the feasibility and potential risks. Draft a plan and provide rough estimates.

Analyzing applications using the Migration Toolkit for Applications web console or CLI helps to determine dependencies, potential risks, and relative effort. See the Web Console Guide or CLI Guide for information on how to use these tools.

Prove

Solve and document the identified technical risks, for example, high risk items and issues with unknown effort. Build and shape the new platform infrastructure. Refine the estimates based on the outcomes.

Pilot

Choose a small set of representative applications to transform. Finalize the target platform infrastructure as necessary. Update the documentation as the process is fine-tuned. This pilot consists of one or several iterations of the migration execution, which is scaled during the Deploy phase.

Use the Migration Toolkit for Applications IDE plugin to accelerate the code migration. See the IDE Plugin Guide for information on how to use the IDE plugin.

Plan

Based on the outcomes of the previous steps, sharpen the estimates and refine the project plan. Define the rollout strategy to be used in the Deploy phase to complete the migration. Prepare and schedule the relevant technical enablement courses.

5.2.2.3. Deploy phase

Figure 5.4. Red Hat migration methodology: Deploy phase

The Deploy phase is when you execute the plan created in the Design phase. In this phase, you scale the overall transformation process to complete the plan and bring all applications to their new production environment.

The plan is executed in iterations to deliver value incrementally. With each iteration, you continuously validate against the plan and document findings to improve the next sprint.

The use of the Migration Toolkit for Applications IDE plugin increases speed in each iteration. It can be used with Eclipse or Red Hat CodeReady Studio, and marks migration issues directly in the source code, provides inline hints, and offers code change suggestions. See the IDE Plugin Guide for information on how to use the IDE plugin.