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MySQL Visual Database Migration Tool

Blane Warrene
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Nothing like good timing. I am working on a project with a company right now who has elected to migrate more than 30 Microsoft Access databases of various size and complexity used internally and on the web to MySQL 4.

To my own and all of our good fortunes — MySQL AB today announced the free availability of the MySQL Migration Suite. This GUI toolset will allow for comprehensive migration from Oracle and Access initially (with Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB 2 and others to follow) and is released under the GPL 2 license.

Better yet it is written in Java, meaning one can perform cross-platform database migrations (Unix to Windows, Solaris to Linux and so on). The Suite utilizes time-tested methodologies and a Wizard guide to cover all the basics of migration as well as stored procedures and triggers.

With its handy reporting capabilities, audits and due diligence can be performed on migrations as they are expedited to insure no missing links are passed over.

I am going to do some test migrations in my development environment as taking anything brand new into production can be interesting to say the least. However – this looks to save some serious time and potential headaches.

Breaking with my habit of not mentioning the products I use – normally I have used Navicat during the migration process as it also spans multiple operating systems (specifically Linux, Mac and Windows). It has done its job superbly – however – the MySQL Migration Suite being GPL open source – I absolutely have to give it a run through the paces to see how it performs.

With Navicat 7 pending release and adding several features I felt were missing from version 6 – it may keep me from adopting the MySQL Suite. However, it will not keep me from giving it a good bench test on this current Access project!

For those who also work with MySQL in a commercial capacity (paying for MySQL services or licensing) — the company is also offering quite an appealing $1500 discount on their own consulting services for getting a 5-day kickstart with MySQL 5 deployments.