Retail systems
Live POS migration across a 160-store retail operation
Database cutover engineering for a multiweek POS and inventory rollout, progressing at one or two stores per day while sales continued.
Steven Wittek’s prior employment and consulting experience · Organization anonymized
The work
A major sporting goods retailer was replacing its point-of-sale and inventory platform across approximately 160 stores. The replacement addressed limitations in aging register hardware and software, including compatibility with newer payment terminals and security requirements. I joined later in the project, for the live database cutover and transaction-migration phase.
The rollout progressed over multiple weeks, with store teams migrating one or two locations per day. Each cutover had to account for sales continuing on the old registers while the new system was brought online. Transactions recorded during that transition needed to move into the new sales and inventory environment and remain available to central reporting.
I developed the database scripts used for the staged register cutover. In the pattern I supported, two legacy registers stayed open for sales while two were migrated. Once the new registers were operational, they opened for sales and the remaining legacy registers could be migrated. My scripts captured the transactions generated on the legacy system during that period and synchronized the data into the new environment.
Store technicians executed my batch scripts to run the SQL steps on the registers. The procedure had to be repeatable across a sustained rollout and usable by the people carrying out each live store migration. My responsibility was the transaction capture, migration scripting, and synchronization supporting those cutovers.
I also developed the backend process that synchronized the data with the retailer’s central, on-premises SQL Server reporting environment, which was multiterabyte in size. The work connected register-level transactions with the new sales and inventory process and the central reporting destination. I also worked across teams on blocking and application bottlenecks affecting that flow.
The result was a repeatable database cutover process supporting a large retail rollout while stores continued trading. My contribution covered the final migration stage: the scripts technicians ran in stores and the backend synchronization that brought the transaction data into the central environment.
Engineering outcome
Delivered the register cutover scripts and backend synchronization supporting a live POS migration across approximately 160 stores, with a rollout pace of one or two stores per day.