BACKGROUND

Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.

As part of a project to switch between database vendors, the expected duration of the business downtime is of essential interest for a customer. This is because the customer will be unable to actually use the system until the conversion process is completed.

One approach to estimating business downtime, is to perform a standard conversion test run with a copy of the productive system, in advance of the actual conversion. However if during the later actual conversion process, the expected window for business downtime is not achieved, productivity of the customer can be adversely impacted.

SUMMARY

Embodiments allow exploration and forecasting of downtime resulting from conversion of a software program from a source system to a target system. A first input comprising a benchmark for a practice conversion test run is received, the benchmark including a downtime component. The benchmark is displayed at a user interface. A second input is received comprising a statistic stored in a conversion database and reflecting a prior actual software conversion process run. The benchmark and the statistic are processed with reference to an expert rule set, to generate an optimized result comprising an updated benchmark having a changed downtime component. The updated benchmark including the changed downtime component, is displayed at the user interface. In some embodiments, the processing occurs in conjunction with a further input comprising an acceptance of a generated recommendation. In certain embodiments, the processing occurs in conjunction with a further input changing a data volume of the practice conversion test run. Embodiments may feed back to the stored conversion database, statistics resulting from a formal software conversion run conducted according to the optimized result.

The following detailed description and accompanying drawings provide a better understanding of the nature and advantages of various embodiments.

