Practical Application

Started by Gene Pooleover 10 years ago3 messagesgeneral
Jump to latest
#1Gene Poole
gene.poole@macys.com

All,

I'm looking for some real world documentation on the use of ora2pg to move from Oracle DB 11gR2 64-bit to PostgreSQL (i.e. What's the best pgsql version to use; Is it possible to use a exported copy of the Oracle DB to create a pgsql image of it; These kinds of questions).

Does PGSQL function the same as Oracle when using Foreign Keys and Lookup Tables.

This is a POC to see if we can cut costs.

TIA

Eugene Poole
gene.poole@macys.com<mailto:ene.poole@macys.com>

#2Andrew Sullivan
ajs@crankycanuck.ca
In reply to: Gene Poole (#1)
Re: Practical Application

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 03:52:41PM +0000, Gene Poole wrote:

I'm looking for some real world documentation on the use of ora2pg to move from Oracle DB 11gR2 64-bit to PostgreSQL (i.e. What's the best pgsql version to use; Is it possible to use a exported copy of the Oracle DB to create a pgsql image of it; These kinds of questions).

The best version of Postgres to use is the latest stable version, if
you can. The second-best version of Postgres to use is the one you
already have in production :) If you're just doing development, it
might be worth working against 9.5. beta instead of 9.4.x, depending
on your deployment plans.

I have used ora2pg, but last time was a couple years ago so my
experience is stale. It did a pretty good job for me. You might find
that there are some things you end up wanting to modify. What I found
worked best for me was to pull the database into a schema to "stage"
with and then select from that. (When migrating, I often find it
better to look hard at the database schema at the same time. Data
types in Oracle and in Postgres are not perfect matches.)

Note that even if you end up modifying the underlying "real" schema,
you need not necessarily modify your application at the same time.
Postgres has updatable views and so on, so from the point of view of
the application, you can leave the database unchanged. I like to use
this feature, in fact, to do A/B testing on new versions of the
application: the old one gets app_schema_a and the new one
app_schema_b, so you can roll over gradually and change your schema
without a lot of outage hassle and so on.

Does PGSQL function the same as Oracle when using Foreign Keys and Lookup Tables.

Generally, yes. There are some differences. There is an old page at
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Oracle_to_Postgres_Conversion that
outlines some of them. I don't think the grammar differences have
changed too much. The BLOB discussion is all obsolete.

This is a POC to see if we can cut costs.

I'm sure you can! There are also some firms that can help with
migration if you like.

Best regards,

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs@crankycanuck.ca

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

#3Emir Ibrahimbegovic
emir.ibrahimbegovic@gmail.com
In reply to: Andrew Sullivan (#2)
Re: Practical Application

Yeah guys from http://2ndquadrant.com/ are good, especially if you have a
large dataset and your business depends heavily on it. But I assume if
their management wants to cut costs, they expect that their employees will
be able to handle completely new technology with not much prior experience
(first time this happened, ever)

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
wrote:

Show quoted text

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 03:52:41PM +0000, Gene Poole wrote:

I'm looking for some real world documentation on the use of ora2pg to

move from Oracle DB 11gR2 64-bit to PostgreSQL (i.e. What's the best pgsql
version to use; Is it possible to use a exported copy of the Oracle DB to
create a pgsql image of it; These kinds of questions).

The best version of Postgres to use is the latest stable version, if
you can. The second-best version of Postgres to use is the one you
already have in production :) If you're just doing development, it
might be worth working against 9.5. beta instead of 9.4.x, depending
on your deployment plans.

I have used ora2pg, but last time was a couple years ago so my
experience is stale. It did a pretty good job for me. You might find
that there are some things you end up wanting to modify. What I found
worked best for me was to pull the database into a schema to "stage"
with and then select from that. (When migrating, I often find it
better to look hard at the database schema at the same time. Data
types in Oracle and in Postgres are not perfect matches.)

Note that even if you end up modifying the underlying "real" schema,
you need not necessarily modify your application at the same time.
Postgres has updatable views and so on, so from the point of view of
the application, you can leave the database unchanged. I like to use
this feature, in fact, to do A/B testing on new versions of the
application: the old one gets app_schema_a and the new one
app_schema_b, so you can roll over gradually and change your schema
without a lot of outage hassle and so on.

Does PGSQL function the same as Oracle when using Foreign Keys and

Lookup Tables.

Generally, yes. There are some differences. There is an old page at
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Oracle_to_Postgres_Conversion that
outlines some of them. I don't think the grammar differences have
changed too much. The BLOB discussion is all obsolete.

This is a POC to see if we can cut costs.

I'm sure you can! There are also some firms that can help with
migration if you like.

Best regards,

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs@crankycanuck.ca

--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general