Migrating Sun Java System Messenger Express Personal Address Book Using the pab2abs.pl Utility 
by Sarma Vempati
December, 2006
The Messenger Express Web-based email client includes a Personal Address Book (PAB) application for storing and managing user's personal information, such as email addresses and phone numbers. Sun Java System Communications Express, the unified Web client introduced in Sun Java Enterprise System 2004Q2 supersedes Messenger Express and Calendar Express. Communications Express also includes Address Book Store (ABS) that provides all of the functionality of PAB and is better integrated with mail and calendar components.
When upgrading from Messenger Express (also known as Webmail) to Communications Express, you need to migrate users' PAB entries to ABS. (This migration does not occur automatically as part of the upgrade process.) A new tool, pab2abs.pl, has been made available that provides improved performance over the earlier migration tool, runMigrate.sh. This article describes how you can use the pab2abs.pl tool to either migrate a single or a few users, or to migrate your entire PAB database.