Access Control List (ACL)
A list of permissions on a resource specifying which users or systems may read, write, or modify it.
Primary Key
Field (or composite) uniquely identifying a row. The source of all references.
Glossary
500 plain-English definitions for the terms that come up when scoping, running, and validating a data migration.
A list of permissions on a resource specifying which users or systems may read, write, or modify it.
Database transaction property — Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability — that guarantees a write either fully succeeds or fully fails.
A logged interaction between a salesperson and a contact — call, email, meeting, or task. Migrating activities preserves the relationship history that drives forecast accuracy.
Compound field storing street, city, state, postal code, and country. Most platforms split addresses into sub-fields; mappings must align on the schema.
Symmetric-key encryption standard used to protect data at rest and in transit. FlitStack uses AES-256 for stored credentials and migration payloads.
SQL function (SUM, COUNT, AVG) that summarizes a set of rows. Used in validation queries to compare source and destination record counts.
Automated notification triggered when a metric crosses a threshold or a job fails. Critical for catching mid-migration regressions before they reach production.
A list of approved IP addresses, domains, or operations; anything not on the list is rejected. Preferred term over 'whitelist'.
Stripping or hashing identifying values from a dataset so individuals can't be re-identified. Required when migrating production data into non-prod environments.
Application Programming Interface — the contract that lets two systems exchange data programmatically. Migration tools always read and write through APIs.
A service that fronts an API, handling auth, rate limiting, and routing. Common in modern cloud architectures.
A static secret string the client sends with each API request to identify itself. Simpler than OAuth but harder to rotate.
How many requests per second or minute a platform's API will accept before throttling. Determines the minimum runtime of a migration.
A versioned API surface (e.g. v1, v2, 2024-10-15). Migrations must pin to a known version so behavior doesn't shift mid-load.
Moving older records out of the primary system into cheaper, slower storage. Often handled separately from migration to keep the active dataset small.
A field storing multiple values as a list (tags, multi-select). Maps to JSON, comma-separated strings, or junction tables depending on platform.
Work that runs in the background rather than blocking the request. Necessary for long-running migrations.
Transaction property guaranteeing either all changes apply or none do. Prevents half-applied migrations.
Generic name for a property on a record. Used interchangeably with field on many platforms.
Per-record history of what changed during a migration — source ID, destination ID, timestamp, hash. Required for compliance review and post-migration troubleshooting.
End-to-end traceability for every write. Stronger than an audit log because it also captures who initiated each change.
How a tool proves identity to a platform — OAuth, API keys, service accounts. Step zero of every migration.
What an authenticated user is allowed to do. Often tied to scopes, roles, or permission sets.
A column whose value increases automatically with each new row. Common for IDs; tricky to migrate because destination IDs won't match source IDs.
Isolated datacenter within a cloud region. Multi-AZ deployments survive single-datacenter failures.
Binary, schema-aware data format used in streaming and warehouse pipelines. Compact and self-describing.
Amazon Web Services — the most common cloud provider for migration infrastructure.
Filling in missing historical data after the main migration has completed. Often required when an object was excluded from the initial scope.
Delay strategy that waits longer between retries after each failure. Exponential backoff is the standard for handling 429s and 503s.
Mechanism that slows the producer when the consumer can't keep up. Without it, queues overflow and records get dropped.
A point-in-time copy of data taken before a destructive operation. Always taken before a production migration.
Network capacity, measured in bits per second. Caps how fast bulk data can move between source and destination.
Encoding that represents binary data as ASCII text. Used to embed attachments inside JSON API payloads.
A group of records processed together in a single API call or job. Larger batches process more records but risk partial failure.
Number of records per batch. Tuning batch size against the platform's API limits is one of the first migration optimizations.
Short-lived credential sent in an Authorization header. Issued by an OAuth flow and refreshed on expiry.
All-at-once cutover with no parallel-run period. Highest-risk approach; fastest if it succeeds.
A field storing raw bytes — images, PDFs, attachments. Migration usually stages binaries separately from structured data.
Binary Large Object. Generic name for a file or binary payload, whether stored in a database column or object storage.
Running the old and new system side by side, then flipping traffic. Used for application cutover; rarely fits migration because data only lives in one system.
A field with two values — true or false. Source platforms vary on whether 'false' or NULL is the absence signal.
A non-human user account used for automation. FlitStack runs migrations under a dedicated bot account so audit logs are unambiguous.
A named version of source code or data. Migration runs are often branched so trial runs don't affect the main pipeline.
A table that holds many-to-many relationships between two other tables. Synonymous with junction object.
A middleware component that routes messages between producers and consumers. Kafka, RabbitMQ, and SQS are all brokers.
In-memory holding area for data in flight. Used to smooth variable production and consumption rates.
Higher-throughput endpoint that processes records in batches with looser rate limits. Salesforce, NetSuite, and Workday all expose one.
Loading many rows in a single database operation. Faster than row-by-row inserts and easier on the destination's transaction log.
Faster, smaller storage holding recent or hot data. Used during migrations to avoid re-fetching unchanged source data.
The standard, normalized representation of a value — phone numbers in E.164, addresses in postal format. Defined per field to avoid duplicate-detection misses.
Number of records in an object or the size of a relationship between objects. Affects load order and mapping strategy.
Database rule that deletes child records when the parent is deleted. Must be considered when ordering deletes during a rollback.
Pattern that streams only the records changed since the last run. Used in delta migrations and real-time sync.
Content Delivery Network. Caches assets at edge locations close to users. Rarely involved in migration but often part of the surrounding stack.
A cryptographic document proving identity over TLS. Required for mTLS connections to enterprise platforms.
A bundled group of schema or configuration changes deployed together. Salesforce uses this term for sandbox-to-production deployments.
A source from which support requests arrive — email, chat, phone, web form. Migration must preserve channel attribution on every ticket.
How text is represented as bytes (UTF-8, Latin-1). Migration often surfaces encoding bugs that were invisible in the source.
Saved migration state allowing a resumable run after a failure. Critical for long migrations that can't be re-run from scratch.
A short fingerprint of a file or record used to detect corruption in transit. Hashing is a stronger version.
A record that depends on a parent record. Must load after the parent or foreign-key constraints fail.
An algorithm for encrypting data. AES is the modern standard.
OAuth flow for server-to-server auth without a user present. Standard for migration tools.
Object storage hosted in a cloud provider (S3, GCS, Azure Blob). Where attachments and migration artifacts usually live.
A group of servers presenting as a single system. Most production databases run as clusters for HA.
A vertical slice of a database table — a single field across many rows. Migration mappings are typically column-to-column.
A group of related columns stored together in wide-column databases like Cassandra.
A storage-engine operation that rewrites files to remove deleted rows and reclaim space. Affects timing of post-migration validation.
The account or organization record in most CRMs. Hub for contacts, deals, and activities.
A primary key made from two or more columns. Common in legacy schemas; harder to migrate to systems that require single-column IDs.
Reducing payload size. GZIP at the transport layer, Parquet at the storage layer are both common.
Number of operations running in parallel. Tuned against platform rate limits to maximize throughput.
Reusable set of open database or API connections. Avoids the cost of opening a new connection per request.
A formatted string holding host, port, credentials, and database name. Sensitive — never commit to source.
Code that knows how to read from or write to a specific platform's API. FlitStack ships 1,784+ connectors.
A database rule that records must satisfy (NOT NULL, UNIQUE, FOREIGN KEY). Migration validation surfaces constraint violations before production load.
The individual person record in a CRM. Linked to a company and to activities.
An OS-level virtualization unit (Docker). Migration jobs often run inside containers for isolation.
Lifecycle event where a CRM lead is promoted to a contact, deal, and account. Migration must preserve which leads converted and to what.
A small key/value pair stored in a browser. Rarely involved in API-based migrations but relevant when scraping or driving UIs.
Unique ID attached to a request as it crosses systems. Lets you trace one migration record through every log line.
An accounting code identifying who pays for a cost. Tracked in ERP migrations.
Customer Relationship Management — software where sales tracks deals. The most-migrated category at FlitStack.
A Unix scheduler that runs jobs at fixed times. Used for scheduled delta-sync runs after the main migration.
Create, Read, Update, Delete — the four basic operations on a record. Migration tools implement all four against every connector.
Opaque token returned by an API representing your position in a result set. More stable than offset-based pagination when records are being added or removed.
Tenant-defined attribute on a standard object. Requires per-tenant mapping during migration.
Tenant-defined UI arrangement for an object. Doesn't migrate as data; rebuilt natively in the destination.
Tenant-defined record type that doesn't ship out of the box. Common in CRM and project tools.
The moment a team stops using the source and starts using the destination. Usually a planned weekend.
Total time from initiating a migration to going live. Tracked as a primary metric.
Workflow where steps are nodes and dependencies are edges, with no cycles. Most pipeline orchestrators (Airflow, Dagster) execute DAGs.
A searchable inventory of every dataset, table, and field in the org. Used pre-migration to discover what exists.
Fixing data quality issues — duplicates, typos, missing values — before or during migration.
Formal agreement between data producer and consumer about schema and semantics. Prevents schema drift from breaking downstream systems.
SQL subset for defining schema — CREATE, ALTER, DROP. Run before any data load.
Engineer responsible for building and maintaining data pipelines. Often the buyer of a migration tool.
Policies and processes governing who can access, change, or delete data. Migration must respect governance rules.
Storage that holds raw, untransformed data at scale. Source for many migrations.
Hybrid that adds table semantics to a data lake (Delta Lake, Iceberg). Bridges lake and warehouse patterns.
Traceable record of where each value came from in the source. Required for compliance and debugging.
Tools that detect and block sensitive data leaving a controlled boundary. Configured around migration pipelines for regulated data.
SQL subset for working with data — INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, SELECT.
A small, focused warehouse for a single business domain. Often built downstream of the main warehouse.
Decentralized data architecture where each domain owns its data products. Affects how migrations are scoped across teams.
One-time bulk move of records between systems. The category of work FlitStack solves.
Designing the schema and relationships a system will use. Done before any migration so the destination shape is decided.
Statistical analysis of source data to understand types, ranges, nulls, and patterns. Run before mapping.
Whether data is accurate, complete, consistent, and timely. Tracked per object pre- and post-migration.
A check that a record must pass (e.g. email must be valid format). Run during validation.
How long records must be kept before deletion. Some regulated industries require multi-year retention.
The human responsible for the quality of a specific dataset. Migration scoping calls usually include the data steward.
How a field is stored — text, number, date, boolean, picklist, JSON. Type mismatches are the most common cause of migration failures.
Checks that records meet destination rules before being written.
Analytics-optimized database holding structured, modeled business data. Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift.
Persistent structured store. Migrations move data between databases through their APIs or directly via SQL.
Observability platform. Common monitoring target for migration job logs and metrics.
In-memory tabular data structure (pandas, Spark). Often used as the staging format during transformation.
A field storing a calendar date without time. Time-zone-free.
A field storing date and time. Migration must align on time zones — UTC is safest.
Data build tool. Open-source framework for transforming data inside a warehouse. Useful for post-load reshaping.
Queue holding records that failed processing. Manually triaged after the run.
A fixed-precision numeric field. Avoids floating-point rounding errors in financial data.
Detecting and merging duplicate records before, during, or after a migration. Critical when consolidating two systems into one.
Value used when a field is left blank. Source and destination defaults often differ.
Open-source table format that adds ACID transactions and time travel to data lakes.
A follow-up run that catches only the records modified in the source since the previous run. Enables zero-downtime cutovers.
Synonym for delta migration; used more often for ongoing sync than one-time catch-up.
Storing redundant data to speed reads. Common in destination schemas; migration must compute the denormalized fields.
A record or object that must exist before another can load. Migrations are ordered to respect dependencies.
The act of releasing code or config to an environment. Often coordinated with cutover.
A field computed from other fields (full_name from first + last). Source may store it; destination may compute it.
The platform receiving the migrated data. Writable during the migration window.
Warehouse design pattern with fact and dimension tables. Affects how source data is reshaped.
Point-to-point connection between two systems with no middleware. Simpler but doesn't scale across many integrations.
Domain Name System. Resolves hostnames to IPs. Migration tools depend on DNS to reach platform APIs.
Database storing JSON-like documents (MongoDB, Couchbase). Schema-flexible.
A logical grouping of data, code, or responsibility. Used in data mesh architectures.
Time the system is unavailable to users. Cutover plans aim to minimize it.
Library that lets code talk to a database or service (JDBC, ODBC).
Practice migration against staging or a sample so failures surface before production data moves.
Plain object used to move data between layers or systems. Migration libraries often define DTOs per object.
Pattern of writing to both old and new systems during transition. Helps with phased cutovers but requires careful conflict handling.
Identifying records that already exist in the destination before insert. Prevents creating duplicates on retry.
A rare data condition that breaks the happy-path mapping. Found by sample migrations and edge-case sweeps.
Newer pattern — load raw source into the destination first, then transform in place. Suits cloud data warehouses.
A field storing an email address. Often the de facto unique identifier for a contact across systems.
A nested document inside another (NoSQL). Maps to a related table or JSON column in SQL destinations.
Data encrypted on disk. AES-256 is the modern default.
Data encrypted while moving over the network. TLS 1.2+ is the modern default.
Test that exercises the entire migration path — extract, transform, load, validate.
A specific URL path on an API (e.g. /v2/contacts). Each migration touches dozens.
A type of thing the system tracks (Contact, Order, Ticket). Synonymous with object in most contexts.
A field whose value must come from a fixed list. Maps to picklist, dropdown, or single-select.
A named deployment context (dev, staging, prod). Migrations are tested in staging before prod.
Standardized identifier for a specific failure (HTTP 429, Salesforce DUPLICATE_VALUE).
Code that catches and reacts to failures — retry, log, route to DLQ.
Helpdesk concept: routing a ticket to a higher tier when SLA is at risk. Must migrate with the ticket history.
HTTP header carrying a record's version fingerprint. Used to detect concurrent edits during sync.
Classic migration pattern — pull from source, reshape in flight, write to destination.
A discrete action recorded in a stream (user signed up, ticket created). Migration of event streams is its own discipline.
Pattern where state is derived from an append-only log of events. Migrating an event-sourced system means migrating the log.
Continuous flow of events through a broker. Kafka topics, Kinesis streams.
Read might temporarily return stale data after a write. Most distributed systems trade strong consistency for availability.
Comparison strategy requiring identical values. Used in deduplication where the field is canonical.
Pulling data out of a system. The first step of any migration.
The 'E' in ETL. Reading records from the source.
Automatic switch to a backup system when the primary fails.
Property of continuing to operate when components fail. Migration pipelines must be fault-tolerant or runs of any meaningful size will abort.
Runtime toggle that turns a code path on or off. Used to gate new connector versions during rollout.
A single attribute on a record (email, status, owner). Synonymous with column in SQL contexts.
Maximum string length a field will accept. Truncation occurs when source values exceed destination length.
Declaring which source field becomes which destination field, including any transformation. The core artifact of every migration.
Named grouping of fields used in layouts or APIs. Salesforce concept; affects what's surfaced in the UI post-migration.
Encoding of structured data in a file — CSV, Parquet, JSON, Avro.
Constraint applied to limit which records are migrated (e.g. 'only contacts created in last 5 years').
Network device that filters traffic. Often must be configured to allow migration-tool IPs.
A file with no nested structure (CSV, TSV). Common interchange format for legacy migrations.
A field whose value points to a record in another object. Must be remapped to the destination's new IDs after load.
A template specifying how a value is rendered (e.g. date format 'YYYY-MM-DD').
Ability of older code to handle data written by newer code. Important when migrating to a schema that will keep evolving.
One-shot migration of every record in scope, with no incremental follow-ups. Suits one-time replatforms with a hard cutover.
SQL join returning rows from both tables, with NULLs where no match. Useful in reconciliation queries.
A reusable unit of code that takes inputs and returns output. Migration transforms are written as functions.
See API Gateway. A service fronting an API.
EU regulation governing personal data. Migration of EU-citizen data must comply with GDPR transfer rules.
HTTP method for retrieving data. Used to read source records.
Distributed version control. Migration code lives in Git.
Wildcard pattern matching file paths (e.g. *.csv). Common in batch migration tools.
Query language for APIs where the client specifies which fields to return. Reduces over-fetching during extract.
SQL clause that aggregates rows sharing a value. Used in validation to count records by category.
Binary RPC protocol over HTTP/2. Faster than REST; used by some platforms for high-throughput APIs.
Function called when an event occurs. Webhook handlers process incoming change notifications.
Fixed-length fingerprint of input data (MD5, SHA-256). Used to compare records byte-for-byte.
Computing hashes per record to verify migration integrity end-to-end. The strongest signal that nothing was corrupted in transit.
Key-value pair in an HTTP request or response. Carries auth tokens, content type, rate-limit info.
Endpoint or query that confirms a system is responsive. Run before each migration phase.
Software for tracking support tickets. Category of migration FlitStack supports.
Architecture that survives single-component failures. Most production systems are HA.
US law governing protected health information. Migrations involving PHI must use HIPAA-compliant tooling.
Records older than the recent activity window. Often filtered out of initial migration scope.
Generic name for a callback. See Webhook for the URL-based variant.
Adding more machines to handle load. Most modern systems scale horizontally.
Human Resources Management System. Category of migration FlitStack supports.
HyperText Transfer Protocol. The transport layer for almost all API traffic.
HTTP over TLS. Required for any API touching real data.
Identity and Access Management. AWS service (and pattern) for controlling who can do what.
Property that running the same migration twice produces the same destination state. Required for safe retry on failure.
Client-generated key sent with a write so the server can detect and ignore duplicates. Standard practice for payment and migration APIs.
Unique value identifying a record. Source IDs almost never match destination IDs; mappings between them are kept.
System that authenticates users (Okta, Azure AD, Google). Migration tools authenticate against the customer's IdP.
A record or value that cannot be modified after creation. Event logs are immutable.
Loading data into a system. The 'L' in ETL.
Modifying a system to look like the new one without moving data. Rare; usually limited to schema upgrades.
Loading only what changed since the last load. Synonym for delta migration in many contexts.
Auxiliary structure that speeds queries against a column. Migration may need to drop and rebuild indexes for performance.
The first, full migration run. Followed by delta sync to catch in-flight changes.
SQL join returning only matching rows from both tables. Default join type.
Data entering a function or pipeline stage.
A field storing whole numbers. Sized 32-bit or 64-bit depending on platform.
A live connection between two systems for ongoing data exchange. Distinct from migration, which is one-time.
Private comment on a ticket, visible only to agents. Must migrate without exposure to end customers.
Standard format for dates and times (e.g. 2026-05-28T08:14:00Z). Avoids time-zone ambiguity.
Random delay added to retry timing to prevent thundering-herd retries. Standard in retry policies.
SQL operation combining rows from two tables on a condition. Foundation of validation queries.
JavaScript Object Notation. Default API payload format.
Query language for selecting values inside a JSON document.
Standard for describing the structure of a JSON document. Used to validate API payloads.
A record type holding many-to-many relationships between two others. Common in CRM and ERP.
JSON Web Token. Signed token format used for short-lived auth.
Distributed event-streaming platform. Common backbone for CDC and real-time sync.
Project management visualization of work as cards moving across columns. Migrates as Project + Task data, not as the view.
Field or set of fields uniquely identifying a record.
Database storing simple key-to-value mappings (Redis, DynamoDB). Used as cache layers.
Secure storage for cryptographic keys (JKS, PKCS12).
AWS managed streaming service. Used for event-driven migration triggers.
Key Management Service. Cloud-managed encryption key storage.
Self-service article repository attached to a helpdesk. Migration must preserve article metadata and revision history.
Tag-like categorization on tickets. Migrates as a string association.
AWS function-as-a-service. Useful for serverless migration triggers.
Pre-configured cloud environment ready to receive workloads. Often built before a large migration.
Time delay between request and response. Drives migration throughput more than raw bandwidth.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Used by older enterprise auth systems.
Pre-qualified contact record, distinct from a converted contact. Some CRMs have this concept; others don't.
Where a contact sits in the buyer journey (subscriber, lead, MQL, customer). Value-mapped across CRMs.
Migration strategy that moves a system as-is to a new platform with minimal changes. Fast but doesn't take advantage of new capabilities.
Traceable record of where each destination value came from in the source. Needed for compliance and post-migration debugging.
Network device distributing requests across multiple servers.
Test that exercises the system under expected production traffic. Run pre-cutover.
A claim that prevents others from modifying a row or table. Long locks block migration runs.
Centralizing logs from many sources into one searchable store (Datadog, Splunk, ELK).
Marking a record deleted without physically removing it (deleted_at timestamp). Easier to migrate than physical deletes.
Client-side technique for waiting on server-side events without holding open a streaming connection.
Operation that resolves an ID to a related record. Cached during migration to avoid re-fetches.
A field that references another record — synonymous with foreign key in CRM and ERP contexts.
Reference table mapping codes to descriptions (country code → country name). Migrated before the records that reference it.
Pre-canned response and action template for agents. Doesn't migrate as data; rebuilt natively.
Relationship where each record on both sides can link to many on the other (Contact ↔ Tag). Modeled with junction tables.
General term for transformation rules between source and destination. See Field Mapping, Value Mapping.
Persisted artifact (JSON, CSV, YAML) capturing every field map, value translation, and transform rule. The source of truth.
Reference data shared across many systems — customers, products, employees. Typically managed centrally.
Practice of designating one system as authoritative for a given entity. Resolves conflicts across overlapping systems.
A query result stored as a table that refreshes periodically. Speeds repeated reads at the cost of staleness.
Average time to restore service after a failure. Tracked for production systems.
Buffer that decouples producers and consumers (SQS, RabbitMQ). Smooths bursts.
Data about data — schema, types, timestamps, owners. Migrates separately from records.
Small independent service that owns one business capability. Each microservice typically owns its own data.
General term for moving software, code, or data between environments or platforms.
Document specifying scope, schedule, owners, and rollback path. Required for any production migration.
Time interval during which the migration is permitted to run. Often nights and weekends.
Identifier for a file format (application/json, text/csv). Used in HTTP Content-Type headers.
Fake implementation used in tests. Migration code is exercised against mocks before real APIs.
Popular document database. Common source or destination in modern migrations.
Mutual TLS — both client and server present certificates. Standard for enterprise integrations.
Records that include a currency code along with the amount. Mapping must preserve both.
Architecture spanning multiple cloud regions. Affects how migrations are routed.
Prefix that disambiguates objects from different sources (Salesforce managed package namespaces). Affects field discovery.
Not a Number — floating-point sentinel for invalid math. Must be handled or it corrupts averages.
Newline-Delimited JSON. One JSON object per line. Stream-friendly format.
Oracle ERP system. Common migration target for finance teams.
A single server in a cluster or graph.
Cryptographic property that a sender can't deny having sent a message. Required for some regulated audit trails.
Reshaping data so each fact lives in one place. Common when migrating from spreadsheets into a CRM.
Catch-all for non-relational databases — document, wide-column, key-value, graph.
Absence of a value in a database. Distinct from empty string or zero.
Database rule requiring a value. Migration must supply non-null defaults for required destination fields.
A field storing numbers — integer or decimal.
Industry-standard token-based authentication. Most modern platforms require OAuth for any non-trivial API access.
A record type — Contacts, Deals, Tickets, Employees, Tasks. The unit of mapping in every migration.
Stages a record passes through — created, updated, archived, deleted. Migration must preserve current lifecycle state.
Cloud-native key-value store for files (S3, GCS). Where migration artifacts and attachments usually live.
Library that maps database rows to in-memory objects. Migration code often uses an ORM against staging databases.
Ability to understand system state from external outputs. Built from logs, metrics, and traces.
Standard query protocol over HTTP. Used by Microsoft platforms.
Position in a result set. Combined with limit to page through results.
Online Analytical Processing — workload pattern for analytics (read-heavy, aggregate-heavy).
Online Transactional Processing — workload pattern for operational systems (small reads/writes, high concurrency).
Software running in the customer's own datacenter, not in a cloud provider. Migration must support on-prem source systems.
Relationship where a record on one side links to many on the other (Company → Contacts).
Relationship where each record on one side links to exactly one on the other.
Specification for describing REST APIs (formerly Swagger). Useful for auto-generating connector clients.
Open-source search engine. Successor to Elasticsearch in many cloud deployments.
Database holding current-state operational data, separate from the warehouse.
Salesforce term for a deal. Tracks expected revenue and stage.
Concurrency strategy that detects conflicts at commit time, not lock time. Uses version numbers or ETags.
Optimized Row Columnar. Apache file format for warehouse storage.
Coordinating many jobs into a single workflow (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect).
Hierarchical structure showing reporting relationships. Migrated as parent_id fields on Employee records.
Webhook the source platform sends to the destination on change events. Used for delta migration.
A field assigning a record to a user or team. Sales pipelines especially require owner remapping.
How an API returns large result sets in chunks. Cursor-based and offset-based variants.
Named input to a function or query.
A record other records depend on. Loaded first.
Hierarchical link where the child can't exist without the parent (Project → Task). Must be preserved during migration.
Columnar binary file format. Standard for warehouse loads.
Reading a structured payload into program objects.
A batch where some records succeed and others fail. Most APIs allow it; migration tooling must surface the failed subset.
Subset of data split off for parallel processing or storage management.
Field used to assign records to partitions. Common in distributed databases.
HTTP method for partial updates. Sends only the changed fields.
Body of an HTTP request or response.
Test measuring throughput and latency under load.
Right to perform an action. Granted via roles or ACLs.
Code that reads and writes the database. Migration tools have per-platform persistence layers.
Concurrency strategy that takes a lock before reading. Avoids conflicts but limits throughput.
Protected Health Information. Regulated under HIPAA in the US.
A field constrained to a fixed list of values — synonymous with enum or dropdown.
Personally Identifiable Information. Regulated under GDPR, CCPA, and similar laws.
End-to-end flow of records from source to destination including connectors, transforms, validation, and rollback.
A column on the deal kanban board (Discovery, Demo, Negotiation, Closed Won). Value-mapped during migration.
SQL operation reshaping rows into columns. Useful for cross-tabulating validation reports.
Unencrypted, unencoded text. Avoid for any sensitive value.
Generic term for the system being migrated to or from.
Optional extension to a connector or platform. Sometimes adds custom fields that affect migration.
Category of software tracking projects and tasks. One of FlitStack's supported migration categories.
Repeatedly query an API to detect changes. Used when no webhook is available.
HTTP method for creating records.
PostgreSQL — popular open-source relational database, common migration source and destination.
Field (or composite) uniquely identifying a row. The source of all references.
A specific permission, often more granular than a role.
Stored database code that runs server-side.
Item or SKU record in CRM, commerce, or ERP. Forms the basis of order and invoice records.
The live environment serving real users.
Permission grouping in Salesforce. Configuration, not data; rebuilt natively.
Top-level work container holding tasks, members, and settings.
Move code or config from one environment to a higher one (dev → staging → prod).
HubSpot's name for a field on a contact, company, or deal.
Network communication standard (HTTP, gRPC, MQTT).
Intermediate server that forwards requests. Sometimes required to reach platforms inside a corporate network.
Messaging pattern where producers emit events and consumers subscribe to topics.
HTTP method for replacing a record entirely.
Queries Per Second. Common throughput metric.
Holding bucket for records that failed validation. Triaged manually.
Syntax for asking a database or API for data (SQL, SOQL, GraphQL).
FIFO buffer that holds work between producer and consumer.
Bug where outcome depends on undefined ordering of concurrent events. Common when migrating systems with concurrent writers.
Cap on API calls per time window. The most common bottleneck in real migrations.
Role-Based Access Control. Permission model based on roles.
Database replica that serves read-only traffic. Common to read from a replica during extract to avoid impacting production.
Continuous propagation of changes from source to destination. Distinct from migration, which is one-time.
Counting and hashing records on both sides post-migration to prove they match. The pass/fail gate before going live.
A single row in an object — one Contact, one Deal, one Ticket. The atomic unit of migration billing and validation.
Maximum acceptable data loss measured in time. RPO of 1 hour means at most 1 hour of recent data can be lost.
Maximum acceptable downtime. RTO of 4 hours means service must be restored within 4 hours.
In-memory key-value store. Common cache and broker.
Stable, slowly-changing lookup data (country codes, currency codes). Migrated first.
Database guarantee that foreign keys always point to existing rows. Migration order must preserve it.
Long-lived OAuth credential used to obtain new access tokens. Stored securely.
Geographic cluster of cloud datacenters. Migration latency depends on region selection.
A previously-working behavior breaking after a change. Caught by regression tests.
Database storing data in tables with foreign-key relationships (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server).
A link between two records (foreign key, lookup, parent-child).
Re-processing events from the beginning of a log to rebuild state.
Continuously copying data from one database to another. Read replicas, multi-region replication.
A field that must have a value. Validation rejects records missing it.
The data returned by an API call.
Architectural style for HTTP APIs using verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) on resource URLs.
Recover data from a backup.
Rules for how long data must be kept and when it can be deleted.
Attempting an operation again after failure. Bounded by retry policy.
Rules governing retries — max attempts, backoff, jitter, when to give up.
Pushing data from a warehouse back into operational tools (CRMs, helpdesks, marketing). Continuous, not one-time.
Named bundle of permissions assigned to a user.
Restoring the destination to its pre-migration state. FlitStack's one-click rollback works inside the post-migration window.
Distribution strategy that cycles through targets evenly.
A URL path on an API.
Rule deciding which user, team, or queue receives a record. Common in helpdesk and CRM.
A single record in a table.
Database feature that filters which rows a user can see based on identity. Affects extract privileges.
Step-by-step recovery guide for a specific failure scenario.
AWS Simple Storage Service. Object storage; default home for migration artifacts.
Software as a Service. Subscription-based cloud software; FlitStack is SaaS.
XML-based federation protocol for SSO. Common in enterprise auth.
Test run on a representative subset (typically 50–200 records) before the full production load. Catches type mismatches and edge cases for cheap.
Non-production copy of a platform for testing. Salesforce sandboxes are the canonical example.
The structure of an object — fields, types, constraints, relationships. Discovered from the source; mapped to the destination.
Automated walk of the source platform's API to enumerate every object, field, and relationship. The first step of every migration.
Schema changes that happen between extraction and load, breaking the pipeline.
Planned, backward-compatible schema changes over time.
Service that stores and versions schemas. Avoids each consumer hard-coding the shape.
System for Cross-domain Identity Management. Protocol for provisioning users across systems.
Granular permission requested by an OAuth client. Migration tools request only the scopes they need.
Auxiliary data structure for full-text search (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch).
Sensitive credential (API key, OAuth token, database password). Stored in a secrets manager.
A filtered subset of contacts used for marketing.
Software the customer runs themselves. Some platforms offer both SaaS and self-hosted editions.
Database object that generates monotonically increasing numbers. Common ID source.
Code that converts an object to a transport format (JSON, Avro, Protobuf).
Server-to-client streaming over HTTP. Lighter than WebSockets.
Non-human account used by automation. Migration tools authenticate as service accounts.
A continuous interaction between a client and server. May hold auth state.
Splitting a database across multiple servers by some key. Necessary for very large datasets.
Helper process running alongside the main application. Common in containerized deployments.
Login mechanism letting one identity unlock many systems.
Service-level agreement. In a migration context, the contractual promise about uptime, response time, or data-loss tolerance during the cutover window.
Service Level Indicator — the metric you measure (error rate, latency).
Service Level Objective — target value for an SLI (e.g. 99.9% uptime).
Point-in-time copy of data, usually for backup or testing.
Older XML-based RPC protocol. Some legacy platforms still expose SOAP endpoints.
See Logical Delete — marking a record deleted without physically removing it.
Salesforce Object Query Language. SQL-like query for Salesforce data.
Where the data is coming from.
The authoritative system for a given dataset. Determined per object.
The platform you're migrating away from. Read-only during the migration.
Sarbanes-Oxley Act. US law affecting financial data systems.
Structured Query Language. Standard query language for relational databases.
AWS Simple Queue Service. Managed message queue.
Secure Shell. Encrypted protocol for remote shell access.
Encryption protocols for network traffic. TLS is the modern name.
Intermediate store (database, warehouse, or in-memory) where transformed records land before the final load. Enables retries without re-extracting from the source.
Non-production environment for testing.
A field that ships with the platform out of the box.
An object type that ships with the platform out of the box (Contact, Deal, Account in CRM).
Numeric code in the HTTP response (200 OK, 429 Too Many Requests).
Pre-compiled SQL code stored in the database.
Migration strategy that incrementally replaces an old system by routing traffic to new components piece by piece.
Continuous flow of data, in contrast to batch.
A field storing text. Length, encoding, and collation matter.
Data conforming to a schema — SQL tables, JSON with a JSON Schema.
Tenant-within-tenant on platforms that support hierarchies. Affects scoping of extract.
Recurring billing or event-stream subscription.
Synthetic ID (UUID, auto-increment) assigned by the system, distinct from any business key.
Shorter form of synchronization. Continuous propagation of changes.
Scheduled job that performs incremental sync.
Generated fake data used for testing without exposing real records.
A field maintained by the platform (created_at, modified_by). Rarely writable; usually skipped in migration mapping.
See Source of Truth — the authoritative system for a given entity.
Free-form label attached to a record for categorization.
The destination platform.
Transmission Control Protocol. Reliable byte-stream over IP; underlies HTTP.
One customer's data partition on a multi-tenant platform. API calls are usually scoped to a tenant via auth context or path prefix.
Infrastructure-as-code tool. Useful for provisioning destination environments before migration.
Records used in testing, not real production data.
Same as String Field. Long-form variants are often 'Text Area' or 'Note'.
Slow the rate of operations to stay within a limit.
Server-side slowdown when an API client exceeds rate limits. Connectors must back off and retry on 429 responses or migrations fail mid-load.
Records or bytes processed per unit time.
Sequence of values over time. Distinct schema and storage from operational data.
Offset from UTC. Migration must explicitly handle to avoid date shifts.
Maximum time to wait for a response before giving up.
Numeric or string representation of a point in time. ISO 8601 in UTC is safest.
Generic name for an opaque string credential.
Named stream of events in Kafka.
Transactions Per Second.
End-to-end record of a single request as it crosses systems.
Group of operations that succeed or fail together.
In-flight reshaping of data — type conversion, value mapping, concatenation, splitting, derivation. The 'T' in ETL.
Code that runs automatically when a row is inserted, updated, or deleted.
Losing characters when a value exceeds destination field length. Caught by validation.
Login requiring two independent factors. Adds an extra step migration auth flows must handle.
Explicit conversion from one type to another.
Implicit type conversion. Source of subtle bugs.
User Acceptance Testing — customer-led validation before sign-off.
User-Defined Function. Custom SQL function. Affects whether destination needs them rebuilt.
Universal character set covering most writing systems. UTF-8 is the dominant encoding.
Database rule preventing duplicate values in a column. Catches duplicate-detection misses.
Identifier guaranteed not to repeat within a scope.
Test exercising one function in isolation.
Configure mapping to update existing records instead of inserting new ones.
Insert if not present, update if present. Most platforms expose an upsert endpoint.
Uniform Resource Locator. Address of an API resource.
Coordinated Universal Time. Reference time zone; safest to store timestamps in.
Variable-width Unicode encoding. Default for modern systems.
Universally Unique Identifier. 128-bit random ID, collision-free across systems.
Checks that records meet destination platform rules (required fields, value enums, length limits) before being written. Failures get logged and the offending records skipped.
A declarative rule on the destination platform that rejects records violating a business constraint. Salesforce and HubSpot both expose them.
Translation table between source and destination enum values (source 'Closed Won' → destination 'Won'). Distinct from field mapping, which targets the column.
A saved query that behaves like a table. Often migrated as a recreated view rather than as data.
Virtual Private Cloud. Isolated network within a cloud provider. Migration tools may need VPC peering to reach customer-hosted sources.
A destination URL the source platform calls when something changes. Used for real-time sync and incremental migration triggers.
Bidirectional persistent connection over HTTP. Used for live updates from platforms that don't offer webhooks.
Automated sequence of actions on a record. Doesn't migrate as data; rebuilt natively in the destination.
A top-level container on multi-tenant platforms (Notion, Slack, Asana). Migrations are scoped to one workspace at a time.
eXtensible Markup Language. Older structured-data format. Still common in SOAP APIs and legacy enterprise exports.
Query language for selecting nodes inside an XML document. Used when extracting from legacy SOAP APIs.
Human-readable data-serialization format. Common for mapping files and pipeline configuration.
Security model that authenticates and authorizes every request, regardless of network location. Influences how migration tools connect to enterprise sources.
Migration strategy that keeps the source live and uses delta sync to catch up records modified during the production load. No business-hours impact.
Missing a term? Tell us and we'll add it →