According to Gartner and their strategic planning assumptions, “by 2023 over 70% of organizations will need to migrate to a new Database Management System (DBMS).”
Many organizations are considering migrating their databases to align with strategic modernization initiatives and to cut costs associated with supporting database legacy systems. Our team of Postgres experts has helped our customers complete over 300 of these types of database migrations.
A project like this can seem like a huge undertaking with many stakeholders and considerations. With the right planning though, a migration project can help organizations reach these important business goals faster while mitigating risk.

Best Practice Steps for a Database Migration

Per our understanding, The 2020 Gartner Report, How to Succeed at Database and DBMS Migration details three main phases for any migration project that are surrounded by preparation and follow up. These main phases include: High Level Assessment, Detailed Migration Study, and Migration.
Gartner mentions the importance of these steps stating, “migrations succeed because of thorough planning, which identifies and systematically mitigates the risks to the project. The phases of the migration progressively reduce risk.”

High-level Assessment

This essential assessment will align with the use case. During this phase, the team will outline all costs as well as determine any benefits and optimizations the migration will contribute. The main goals of this phase include:

• Establishing a big picture view
• Creating a feasibility assessment.

Detailed Migration Study

Once the use case is determined, the team can determine the scope of the project and use this to perform a detailed migration study. This study will assess the code and data being migrated, estimate efforts for conversion, test performance, and many other key action items to ensure the desired migration results. The end results of this phase should include:

• Detailed code and data inventory
• Justification
• Migration Plan

Migration

The final core phase will be performing the actual migration. Based on all the pre-work done, Gartner states “the work should be fairly mechanical and based on the firm specifications and plan produced in the previous phase.” The completed action items of this phase include:

• Execution of migration plan
• Testing

Review the full report here where Gartner outlines the best practices for a successful database or DBMS migration project.

Need help with your Oracle to PostgreSQL migration planning?

We offer a Migration Assessment  service and a Migration Assistance service as part of our professional service offerings to help minimize the time it takes to deploy on Postgres. We can help you understand the Oracle to PostgreSQL migration path and effort involved so that you can estimate and plan effectively.

Oracle to Postgres Migration Assessment

Our Postgres expert will conduct an evaluation of your current databases to help identify the best migration candidates. They will also help you understand which functions in Postgres can replace functionality in your current databases.

Oracle to Postgres Migration Assistance

After a migration assessment is completed, we can continue to help your developers migrate using the best solutions to make sure application code transitions to functions and SQL commands that are Postgres-compatible
Learn more about how to start Oracle to PostgreSQL migration, our engagement approach, assessment deliverables, or how to request a quote.