CASE STUDY — HEALTHCARE DATA ARCHIVAL

    Catholic Healthcare Trust Retires 5 Legacy Systems into One Secure Oracle Archive

    A New Hampshire health system needed to retire five aging platforms — Infinium, SMS, Kronos, Papervision and ECHO Credentialing — while keeping ten years of records available for legal, audit and insurance queries. Syntra ETL migrated approximately 8 TB of data and around 150,000 attachments into a consolidated Oracle Autonomous (ATP) archive, with Oracle APEX and Microsoft Power BI reporting. Oracle Fusion and Oracle Taleo recruiting data were extracted and archived into the same platform. All five systems are now decommissioned and the archive is live in production.

    5
    Legacy systems retired
    ~8 TB
    Data + ~150K attachments
    10 yrs
    History archived
    Oracle ATP
    + APEX & Power BI

    The challenge: retention without the legacy bill

    Catholic Healthcare Trust (CHT) had accumulated a stack of specialized applications — each holding records the organization must retain for ten years to answer legal, audit and insurance queries — but keeping them running purely to read history had become expensive and risky.

    CHT's estate spanned an Infinium ERP/HR platform, an SMS hospital information system, Kronos workforce management, Papervision document imaging, and ECHO provider credentialing. Auditors, finance, HR, credentialing and clinical staff still needed to retrieve records going back years — so the systems couldn't simply be switched off.

    But maintaining five legacy platforms just to read history means paying for licenses, infrastructure and the shrinking pool of specialists who run them. Across the five systems, this meant preserving roughly 8 TB of data and around 150,000 attachments — searchable, secure, and available for daily business as well as legal, audit and insurance requests.

    Challenges we solved

    This wasn't a clean, documented migration — retiring five systems meant solving some genuinely hard data problems.

    End-of-life applications

    The source systems were out of vendor support — raising security, compliance and continuity risk. Archiving and decommissioning removed that risk.

    📄

    Little documentation, few users left

    Minimal documentation survived and few functional users remained who understood the applications, so we reverse-engineered the data model and validated it with the business.

    🔌

    Direct, low-level data access

    With no clean APIs, we connected directly at the database and file level — SQL Server, IBM i (AS/400) and file-based data — to extract complete, accurate history.

    🕰️

    Data last touched in 2007–2008

    Some applications hadn't been updated since 2007/2008 — dated formats, encodings and structures that required careful handling.

    🧩

    5,000+ tables to navigate

    With some systems holding over 5,000 tables, we profiled the schema to isolate the relatively small set that actually held the records worth keeping.

    The solution

    An end-to-end legacy archival platform on Oracle Autonomous Database.

    🔎

    Discovery & table mapping

    Reviewed and finalized exactly which archival tables, records and attachments to bring across from all five systems and Oracle Fusion.

    🗄️

    Consolidated Oracle ATP database

    Extracted, transformed and loaded ten years of history into a single Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) archival database — one secure home for every legacy record.

    📤

    Controlled extraction

    Legacy systems extracted directly; for Oracle Fusion, BI Publisher (BIP) reports and HDL-based templates fetched records — a complete replication of everything CHT could previously access.

    📊

    APEX portal + Power BI reports

    An Oracle APEX portal for search, browse and export, plus 15–20 key Microsoft Power BI reports per system for daily business use.

    🔐

    Security, audit & read-only

    Role-based access control, an access audit log, and a strictly read-only design — simple, secure and inexpensive to maintain.

    ☁️

    Cloud backup + ongoing support

    A complete backup of the original source data retained on the cloud, plus ongoing Syntra support for any query.

    How it was delivered

    A governed engagement — completed and live in production.

    1

    Discovery & extraction setup

    Profiled the five source systems, Oracle Fusion and Oracle Taleo, finalized ten-year table mapping, and stood up the extraction approach.

    2

    Design & development

    Designed the Oracle ATP archival schema and built the APEX portal, Power BI reports and data-load pipelines.

    3

    Data load, testing & UAT

    Loaded ~8 TB and ~150,000 attachments, validated against source, and ran user acceptance testing to sign-off.

    4

    Go-live & rollout

    Deployed to production with secure, role-based access, and 15–20 live reports per system.

    5

    Backup, training & handover

    Retained a full cloud backup of the originals, delivered documentation and training, and set up ongoing Syntra support.

    What went live

    The outcome for Catholic Healthcare Trust.

    🗃️

    One searchable archive

    Ten years of data from five systems, consolidated and searchable in the Oracle ATP archive via APEX.

    🔌

    Five systems retired

    Infinium, SMS, Kronos, Papervision and ECHO decommissioned — no longer paid for or maintained.

    📊

    15–20 reports per system

    The most-used business reports for each system, live in Power BI/APEX for daily operations.

    🛡️

    Compliant & audited

    Role-based access and audit logging support 10-year legal, audit and insurance retention.

    ☁️

    Backed up & supported

    A complete cloud backup of the original data, plus ongoing Syntra support for any query.

    💵

    Lower long-term cost

    Recurring license, infrastructure and specialist cost for five legacy systems removed.

    Frequently asked questions

    Which systems were retired, and is there a page for each?+

    Five systems were archived and decommissioned — Infinium, SMS (Shared Medical Systems), Kronos, Papervision and ECHO Credentialing — each with its own detailed archival page linked below.

    How much data was migrated?+

    Approximately 8 TB of data and around 150,000 attachments across the five systems, covering ten years of history to meet legal, audit and insurance retention requirements.

    What is the final architecture?+

    The consolidated archive runs on an Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) database, with an Oracle APEX portal for search/browse/export and Microsoft Power BI for the business reports — 15 to 20 of the most-used reports per system, delivered post go-live.

    Is the original data backed up, and is support available?+

    Yes — a complete backup of the original source data is retained on the cloud in addition to the archive, and Syntra provides ongoing support for any query that arises.

    Why archive instead of keeping the systems running?+

    Keeping five legacy systems alive purely to read history is costly and risky. A read-only Oracle ATP archive preserves complete, searchable, reportable access to ten years of records while letting CHT decommission the systems and remove their recurring cost.

    Under the hood: the Oracle Cloud data pipeline

    Built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), in close collaboration with Oracle. Data from the five legacy systems — plus records surfaced through Oracle Fusion and Oracle Taleo — moved through a repeatable Extract → Stage → Load → Reconcile → Report pipeline, with the Oracle Autonomous (ATP) database as the destination.

    1

    Extract

    Oracle Fusion data was extracted using BI Publisher (BIP) reports built on Public View Objects (PVOs) and HDL-based templates. Systems outside Fusion were read at source — a direct connection to the IBM i (AS/400) for Infinium, direct SQL for SMS, Kronos and ECHO, and file-based extraction for Papervision. Taleo recruiting objects (Candidate, Application, Attachment) were pulled via Oracle's APIs.

    2

    Stage on OCI Object Storage

    Extracted data landed as files in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Object Storage buckets — a secure, elastic staging zone that decoupled extraction from loading and made re-runs and validation inexpensive.

    3

    Load into Oracle ATP

    From the Object Storage buckets, the data was ingested into the Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) database using OCI's native cloud-load capabilities, into the single consolidated archival schema.

    4

    Reconcile

    For every object, row counts were matched between source and ATP. A full table list with record counts was published for audit and traceability, and data was validated against source on a sample basis.

    5

    Report

    Oracle APEX served the search-and-browse portal, and 23 APEX audit & analytics reports (across AP, PO, GL, HR and Supplier) plus Power BI reports were built for daily business use.

    Data & table reconciliation

    Reconciliation was count-based and evidence-driven. For every archived object, source and ATP record counts were matched and documented, producing a table-level traceability list the business and auditors could rely on. The ATP database was confirmed fully populated and validated with record counts before user acceptance testing — which was completed across multiple client sessions and signed off.

    OCI integration, testing & validation

    A core part of the build was the OCI integration between Oracle Fusion/Cloud and the ATP database, established under an agreed OCI cloud configuration and coordinated directly with Oracle. Integration was tested early to de-risk the load, and validation checks confirmed completeness before go-live. Where Fusion/Taleo extraction hit platform limits (e.g. a 500K-row/day cap on certain Taleo objects), these were resolved through service requests raised with Oracle.

    Planning a legacy archival project?

    If you're retiring legacy systems but need compliant, searchable, reportable access to years of data, we can do the same for you. Tell us your source systems and retention needs.