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SQL Server Migrations

Is your business reliant upon multiple diverse database management systems? Does your organisation run mission critical systems built upon stand alone Microsoft Access databases? Have you considered the ongoing cost of operating, maintaining and supporting such a diversity of database platforms within your organisation?


Migrating your databases to Microsoft SQL Server provides your business with a lower total cost of ownership, ease of management, robust security and enterprise class scalability, availability and reliability. UniverSQL's SQL Server Migrations services can provide the solution for taking your legacy application databases across onto SQL Server.


Facilitated by SQL Server Migrations Assistants, UniverSQL offers a number of database migrations services onto both SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Our approach follows a proven 5 stage methodology;


Initial Assessment Phase

The first step in SQL Server Migrations of databases from Oracle or MS Access to SQL Server is to assess the complexity of the application / database in order to ascertain difficulty, time and approximate cost for the SQL Server migration. While there is no formal measure of a database's complexity, this is typically gauged by the number of business logic objects contained within; stored procedures, functions, triggers, DTS / SSIS packages, etc. Adding to the SQL Server migrations complexity are "system function" differences between the two platforms, as specific functions provided on one platform may not be provided for or supported on the other. There may also be syntactic or semantic differences in the implementation of common functions - all of which would need to be factored in and catered for as part of the SQL Server migration.


Schema Conversion

The schema conversion forms the foundation for the target database. The ultimate goal of this conversion is to facilitate data migration between the two database platforms. Due to disparities between platforms such as Sybase, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, these schema conversion will often not allow for a one to one translation.


SQL Server Migration

Once the schema has been converted, the data can then be migrated across. Data Transformation Services / SQL Server Integration Services are typically employed to transfer the data on a row-by-row or table basis, applying any necessary filters or conversions along the way.


Business Logic Conversion

Conversion of the database business logic is generally the phase carrying with it the highest risk. This is typically due to the complexity of the underlying business logic objects contained within the database and the language features employed to implement these. Additional complexity arises also in the differences in the system function libraries between by the two hosting environments. All these factors must be considered when performing SQL Server Migrations.


Validation, Integration and Performance Analysis

The final component of the SQL Server Migrations process is to address the PL/SQL code. Microsoft offers tools and utilities to assist in the interogation of code and code structures, although often additional manual interaction is required. Once completed, a series of tests are performed to ensure correct functionality has been carried across and the SQL Server database is performing as required.