Jason's Blog on Oracle Modernization Solutions

Sorry, I've been a bit slow getting posting up recently. Finally the book is done. My last blog I announced the publication, but there was still a lot of last minute crunch time editing. Happy to say that the ink is wet, but will be dry by Open World. You will be able to grab a copy at the book store there, or from all the good online bookstores. (amazon.com uk, dk, de, fr...etc for you amex users) http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-modernization-solutions/book

Anyway...done plugging.

So, getting a lot of Sybase migration questions these days. There are a couple of ways that we can look at doing this, and it depends on what the requirements are, of course.

You can use SQL Developer and use some of the updated technology we had from the migration workbench to port that code over. That is the 'cheapest' way to do this. It can parse and and understand the Stored Procs much better than it used to.

Some of the customers have an issue of the actual time it will take to do the port..aka, the batch window from switching one db off, so the migration and sql loader path won't work because the database is just too large and there is only a few hours to port it over.

This is when we start looking at some of our partners and leverage some cool replication technologies. Yikes running out of time. Let me give you some of those details in the next installment....this week I promise

I wanted to follow up on a few ideas from an earlier post and talk a bit more about how practically to move these kinds of datastores (Sybase) and what tools you have available to do this.

SQL Developer Migration Workbench

Oracle has recently released a newly resigned migration work bench. We've had the Migration Workbench around for years, but now it is integrated into SQL Developer. So, now we can have an integrated, repository based way to migrate various 3rd party databases, including MS Access, SQL Server, MYSql and Sybase.

What's cool about the SQL Developer Migration Workbench

The Modernization Team is quite busy with these migrations right now so we are putting the tool through the paces. What's cool about this tool is that it is built upon YEARS of experience moving these data stores. Barry and his team in Ireland have been at this tool for years. It has evolved from the old Migration Workbench (Which you can still use for Informix and DB2).

The automation rate for Schemas and Triggers is quite high. Usually when me or one of my team mates are doing an on-site discovery (which is something that Oracle Modernization can do for you at no cost to help you create a roadmap to modernization...be it from SYBASE or the mainframe...drop me a line to know more) we are able to covert the schemas on the spot.

The Stored Procedures are supported to a very high degree as well. The biggest part of these migrations are around testing. That is a large percentage of the project. Yes, of course you will have to modify the source code to call Oracle instead of Sybase, but that can be done at a pretty automated rate with scripting tools. Again, it comes down to testing.

Did I mention the tool is free? Cool eh?

If you are looking for a step by step guide take a look here
This is a great resource from how-to's to even some ways to estimate.

Again, drop me a line if you want some more specifics on a project you are working on.

Well, long overdue I know...but I've been busy with customers ;-)

There have been some threads around some of the specifics of Sybase migrations, especially around the level of automation that you can expect using SQL Developer.

Schemas come over pretty easily and straig