10.2 Migration Overview

10.2.1 A Visual Guide to Performing a Database Migration

10.2.2 Migrating from Supported Databases

10.2.3 Migrating from Unsupported (Generic) Databases

The Migration Wizard performs the following steps when migrating a database to MySQL:

1. Connects to the source RDBMS and retrieves a list of available databases/schemas.

2. Reverse engineers selected database/schemas into a internal representation specific to the source RDBMS. This step will also perform the renaming of objects/schemas depending on the type of object name mapping method that is chosen.

3. Automatically migrates the source RDBMS objects into MySQL specific objects.

   1. Target schema objects are created.

   2. Target table objects are created.

      1. Columns for each table are copied.

         1. Data types are mapped to MySQL data types.

         2. Default values are mapped to a MySQL supported default value, if possible.

      2. Indexes are converted.

      3. Primary Keys are converted.

      4. Triggers are copied, and commented out if the source is not MySQL.

   3. Foreign Keys for all tables (of all schemas) are converted.

   4. View objects are copied, and commented out if the source is not MySQL.

   5. Stored Procedure and Function objects are copied, and commented out if the source is not MySQL.

4. Provides an opportunity to review the changes, for editing and correcting errors in the migrated objects.

5. Creates the migrated objects in the target MySQL server. If there are errors, you can return to the previous step and correct them, and retry the target creation.

6. Copy data of the migrated tables from the source RDBMS to MySQL.

MySQL Workbench provides support for migrating from some specific RDBMS products. The Migration Wizard will provide the best results when migrating from such products. However, in some cases, other unsupported database products can also be migrated by using its Generic database support, as long as you have an ODBC driver for it. In this case, the migration will be less automatic, but should still work nonetheless.