Oracle, despite being popular is prompting companies to shift to open source alternatives, due to its expensive maintenance, support and licensing fee. An Oracle to PostgreSQL migration report predicts reduction in Oracle usage by 25% approximately by more than 75% of the respondents. Let us walk you through the simple ways to migrate from Oracle DB to PostgreSQL, which involves the migration of indexes, structured and unstructured data and stored manuals. Here are the steps to migrate Oracle database to Postgresql (Open source alternative)

  1. Basic Preparation
  2. Assessment of environment
  3. Solutioning and planning
  4. Picking the suitable tool
  5. Migration process
  6. Expect Business Effects

Benefits of PostgreSQL Being ACID complaint, PostgreSQL is one of the most popular and trending database for companies that are looking for an overall transition. They can get started by implementing the following:

1. Basic Preparation

The primary concern when you implement database migration is to educate teams about the transition. Equipping your team with the technical knowledge and the progressive culture of PostgreSQL emphasizing on seamless collaboration, relentless data governance and persistent business continuity is of vital importance and eases the migration process.

2. Assessment of environment

When companies want to migrate faster to PostgreSQL to reap its benefits quickly, they tend to shift all critical modules of the application at once without assessing the environment and capabilities which could end up in disaster.

To mitigate such challenges, it is inevitable to know about the architecture of the database, application associated with it and its quality assurance procedures. You can easily validate the migration process without any additional expenditure.

You should refrain from using Oracle DB feature based third-party application as it will not support open source alternatives. It is also important to analyze the number of functions that you would want to migrate from the existing database and find out which needs revamping or recoding to suit the new database. This eases the overall workarounds of the migration process.

3. Solutioning and planning

It is a very important phase. This is where many decisions need to be finalized. Enterprises must anticipate the many possible conflicts that may arise and find solutions for them to avoid any risk and surprises later. Deployment options of PostgreSQL, bandwidth needs, strategies for data migration, schema migration and data transfer must be charted out in detail and a decision must be derived. It is also important to evaluate tools for schema migration and data migration and set the pre-requisites in place.

A vital part of the planning is to work out the final cutover strategy to minimize downtime as much as possible. The team must provide an extensive list of things, detailing how they must be performed during the ‘golden hour,’ which is the final hour of transition. This is of humongous help to cut downtime, aids in smooth migration and sorts out dependencies.

4. Picking the suitable tool

Choosing the right tool to migrate is as important as migrating the application itself. Though you can do it manually, leveraging automation tools will shorten the overall time taken to complete the task and allows you to maintain the database after deployment.

The tools that you pick should not just cover the targets but also be code conversion ready to make any future advancement. Tools like AWS SCT and DMS enable easy Oracle to PostgreSQL migration AWS. Using SCT, you can transform dictionaries and libraries with minimal work when you convert oracle to PostgreSQL.

5. Migration process

Using the suitable tool, you connect the oracle database, scan and extract structured data automatically and then generate scripts that are fed to PostgreSQL database. The migration process involves execution of tasks planned from analysis, schema migration, data and SQL migration, code changes and determining functions equivalent to Oracle.

Schema migration: it allows users to create numerous independent schemas without separate users and lets you create objects in them. You can automate it using migration tools.

Functional testing: After the schema is converted, it is ideal to load the data into PostgreSQL and do complete functional testing on it. You can also test the schema in both the databases and compare the results for similarities.

Performance testing: Though there are a lot of similarities between Oracle and PostgreSQL, their transactions and features are different. These differences are tracked, locked and fixed with proper regulation.

Data migration: you can select, extract and apply data from one database to the other, which could be challenging because of its heterogeneous nature but you can overcome it by using the right tool and perfect approach.

6. Expect Business Effects

Having formulated the plan for migration, you need to derive the expected results and impacts of the migration process. At the basic level, you need to make sure that the migration does not cause any disruption in the ongoing business process and initiatives. So, it is important to estimate the downtime tolerance during migration. Also, expect the operational changes that occur when PostgreSQL database integrates and communicates with other features and functions.

Benefits of PostgreSQL

Though oracle and PostgreSQL are popular, there are certain crucial parameters that make PostgreSQL stand out

  • Value for money: For small to mid-size companies, cost saving becomes a vitally important parameter and PostgreSQL supports by offering its service with no charges and relieves you from all budgetary issues.
  • Continuous support: It ensures fast resolution and recovery as its support is available 24*7 throughout the year. Large scaled companies can also opt for paid services, which is still comparatively lesser than Oracle.
  • Functionality Front: Its’ transaction isolation consists of read committed, repeatable read and serializable.
  • Scalability: Due to its open source characteristics, it is lighter than Oracle and provides better scalability.
  • Compatibility: PostgreSQL is compatible with various operating systems, which consist of complex environments. This level of compatibility makes it developer friendly that developers tend to use it their own way without hassles.
  • Automation: it helps to improve agility, consistency, pace, accuracy, which leads to quicker defect detection and fixation.
  • Seamless deliveries: By automating ecosystems with the results of PostgreSQL helps in seamless deliveries across different platforms. You can also monitor and track records continuously for future use and to improve efficiency.

PostgreSQL has some major advantages when compared to Oracle database and it is definitely a go-to choice for enterprises. Migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL could be a hectic process but by using the right tool, suitable approach and a well-equipped team, you can easily achieve success.

Ready to migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL? Choose Aspire now!

 

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