MySQL Workbench Manual  /  Database Migration Wizard  /  Conceptual DBMS Equivalents

10.3 Conceptual DBMS Equivalents

The following table shows a comparison between each DBMS product supported by the Migration Wizard and MySQL.

Table 10.1 Conceptual equivalents between supported DBMS products and MySQL

Concept MS SQL Server Sybase ASE PostgreSQL MySQL Note
Authentication Yes Yes Yes Yes
Auto_Increment Yes Yes Yes Yes PostgreSQL uses sequences for Auto_Increment.
Backup Yes Yes Yes Yes See MySQL Enterprise Backup.
Catalog Yes Yes Yes N/A You can map a catalog into a schema and drop the ownerobject, use the owner as the schema name, or merge the owner and object name together.
Constraints Yes Yes Yes Yes
Data Dictionary N/A
Database Yes Yes Yes Yes
Database Instance
Dump Yes Yes Yes Yes mysqldump
Events Yes Yes Yes Yes
Foreign Keys Yes Yes Yes Yes
Full Text Search Yes Yes Yes Yes In InnoDB as of MySQL Server 5.6, and in all versions of MyISAM.
Index Yes Yes Yes Yes
Information Schema Yes No Yes Yes
Object Names Case Sensitivity Depends on collation Depends on collation Mixed Mixed MySQL: sensitivity of database, table, and trigger names OS dependent; other object names are not case-sensitive. PostgreSQL: as specified in the SQL-99 standard, unquoted object names are treated as not case-sensitive while quoted object names are case-sensitive. Unlike the standard, unquoted object names are converted to lowercase instead of uppercase.
Object Naming Conventions Yes Yes Yes Yes
Packages N/A N/A N/A N/A
Partitioning Yes Yes Yes Yes
Performance Schema N/A N/A Yes Yes
Permissions Yes Yes Yes Yes
Primary Key Yes Yes Yes Yes
Referential Integrity Yes Yes Yes Yes Sybase ASE: referential integrity only through triggers.
Replication Yes Yes Yes Yes
Role Yes Yes Yes N/A Roles are not available in MySQL at the database level.
Schema Yes Yes* Yes Yes Equivalent to database in MySQL. Sybase ASE: Schemas corresponds to user names.
Sequences Yes* Yes* Yes Yes* Standalone sequence objects are not supported in MySQL. Similar functionality can be obtained with IDENTITY columns in MSSQL and AUTO_INCREMENT columns in MySQL.
SQL Modes Yes Yes Yes SET_ANSI_* in MSSQL
Storage Engines N/A N/A Yes* Yes PostgreSQL itself supports and uses only one storage engine (Postgresql). Other companies have added extra storage engines to PostgreSQL.
Stored Procedures Yes Yes Yes Yes
Synonyms N/A N/A N/A N/A
Table Yes Yes Yes Yes
Tablespace Yes Yes* Yes N/A MSSQL groups tables in schemas (unless referring to CREATE TABLESPACE). Sybase ASE: tables are grouped in schemas that are more like user names.
Temporary Tables Yes Yes Yes Yes
Transactions Yes Yes Yes Yes
Triggers Yes Yes Yes Yes
UDFs Yes Yes Yes Yes
Unicode Yes Yes Yes Yes
Unique Key Yes Yes Yes Yes
User Yes Yes Yes Yes
Views Yes Yes Yes Yes

Handling Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL structural differences

A Microsoft SQL Server database is made up of one catalog and one or more schemas. MySQL only supports one schema for each database (or rather, a MySQL database is a schema) so this difference in design must be planned for. The Migration Wizard must know how to handle the migration of schemas for the source (Microsoft SQL Server) database. It can either keep all of the schemas as they are (the Migration Wizard will create one database per schema), or merge them into a single MySQL database. Additional configure options include: either remove the schema names (the Migration Wizard will handle the possible name collisions that may appear along the way), and an option to add the schema name to the database object names as a prefix.