Legacy SQL → DSpace
National Research Foundation of South Africa
The National Research Foundation of South Africa set out to turn two legacy databases — 'Current and Completed Research Projects' and 'NRF Funded Projects' — into a modern research-information system by migrating them into DSpace. Because the legacy SQL systems needed bespoke scripting to extract, the project built a generic data mapper that automatically aligned idiosyncratic legacy fields with DSpace's Dublin Core schema. That tooling minimised manual work, letting administrative staff unfamiliar with DSpace ingest decades of historical funding data. A South African national-government example emphasising reusable migration tooling over hand-crafted, one-off crosswalks.
Original source
IR to RIMS: Transforming an Institutional Repository into a Research Information Management System
University of Cape Town (project archive)
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