The Oracle Migration Strategy – Getting Started

November 30, 2015

Contributed by Craig Silveira

Organizations are being increasingly challenged to do more with less – develop innovative strategies, create compelling products, serve customers more effectively, all while facing limited resources. As a result, IT personnel have begun evaluating how they can manage the IT stack to find additional budget that can be applied back to more strategic initiatives.  

One huge area for cost improvement is the database. For companies with Oracle, migrating to EDB Postgres Enterprise from EnterpriseDB® (EDB™) is a practical first step on the path to cutting expenses. This allows organizations to realize a savings of 70% or more without sacrificing performance, support, or tools. Migrating to EDB Postgres also represents an attractive alternative for Oracle customers facing a difficult decision in the wake of changes Oracle has made to its licensing.

Oracle® has eliminated its popular SE database license option and replaced it with a new license called Oracle SE2, which may require many current SE users to buy new hardware, reconfigure applications and potentially suffer performance degradation. For a limited time, EDB is offering existing Oracle SE users an opportunity to deploy the EDB Postgres™ solution for the same annual maintenance costs they are currently paying Oracle*

With database compatibility for Oracle that EDB has built for EDB Postgres, we have made it easy for database administrators to migrate from their existing Oracle databases. EDB Postgres includes a native PL/SQL stored procedure language so that most Oracle applications can be easily migrated over to EDB Postgres and Oracle DBAs can continue to use existing skills and resources. EDB's compatibility technology helps cap, reduce or eliminate Oracle fees using multiple strategies, while preserving investment in Oracle volume licensing, infrastructure, skills and practices.

Making this migration can seem like a daunting task however. But breaking down the process into the following steps can help. The database migration itself is often the simplest part of the process once you have an overall strategy. Consider the following:

  • Prioritize the right applications: Take an inventory of existing applications running against your existing Oracle database. Many of these might be packaged, commercial off the shelf applications, such as ERP systems from SAP or Salesforce. You should avoid these. While we can technically support them, the application vendor may not support EDB at this time. Instead, focus on custom, homegrown applications.
  • Secure application team buy-in: It’s important to ensure cooperation with those who have the most knowledge about the applications that will be migrated in case minor changes in code and the application might be necessary. Beyond this, it will be necessary to have a team with the key skills and training to assist with the migration process as needed.
  • Utilize a staged migration approach: Don’t migrate all applications from Day One. Once your initial group of applications is identified, continue to narrow the group further, assessing which will be easiest and quickest to migrate and provide the most savings. These initial applications will also enable your team to get a feel for using Postgres and increase your comfort level with using the database as well as populate your internal skillset. From there, stage the remaining apps based on complexity and ROI. Conduct an analysis to prepare answers for potential incompatibilities.
  • Break up the migration: Migrate the schemas and object definitions first to ensure there aren’t any potential failure issues that would in turn result in data load failures.   If there are, apply workarounds to the incompatibilities. From there, begin data migration. There are many ways to perform the data migration to best fit your situation and timeframes.

Migrating from Oracle to another database is not a trivial task and will have a variety of issues that need to be resolved either manually, with migration tools, or with compatible feature/function mappings and substitutions. The EDB Migration Toolkit automates the migration of your databases and many applications run with minimal changes. Often, customer conversions of the applications identified as easy to migrate take days or a few weeks. EDB services like the Oracle Migration Assessment quickly identify high-payback applications and the Migration Factory can take 100% of the burden off your staff and realize savings sooner.

To learn more about setting up a strategy for migrating from Oracle to EDB Postgres visit our Migration Portal.

Craig Silveira is Vice President, Global Sales Engineering, at EnterpriseDB.

 

*Terms and conditions apply

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