When upgrading from AIX 4.2.1 and NetView 4.1 to AIX 4.3.2 and NetView 5.1.1, I
faced the same question as you, i.e. whether to migrate or do a complete
install.

I chose to do a complete, brand new install and then did the simple stupid thing
of tarring up all directories and files under NetView 4.1 and just copying them
to the NetView 5.1.1 host and untarring.  Guess what?  This works perfectly.

To be specific I tarred everything in NetView 4.1 under /usr/OV/databases and
untarred this under NetView 5.1.1 and the maps, databases and everything worked
perfectly when the NetView 5.1.1 daemons were started.  I copied over the
trapd.conf under NetView 4.1 to NetView 5.1.1 and saved all my customizations
also.

Do your backups and then try this method.

Regards,
ken
kgarst AT giantofmaryland DOT com