7 Tips for Migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL

More companies are making the move from Oracle to PostgreSQL for three main reasons: the ever-increasing cost, the licensing complexity, and the increase in audit risk. Since Postgres is open source, moving from Oracle to Postgres offers companies a low total cost of ownership and fast return on investment. Music to most C-suite ears.

Tips for Moving from Oracle to PostgreSQL

Making the move is not without some challenges. Here are some tips to follow when you’re migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL:

1. If you have packaged applications or if you want to move your commercial ERP/CRM/accounting application from Oracle to Postgres, make sure that your vendor offers certification on PostgreSQL. Note: This is not an issue for apps that you control and have the source code.
2. Don’t waste time replicating data you don’t need. This is going to take some time, so it’s usually worth it to leave out the stuff you know you won’t need like a temporary table from your last maintenance.
3. Activate transactions in Postgres. Oracle always uses transactions, but you need to turn it on int PostgreSQL.
4. Training is worth it. Your lead architects, DBAs, and developers must understand the differences between Oracle and PostgreSQL as well as the right way to migrate your applications. Even one week of training helps avoid potential delays as they work around any unexpected surprises.
5. Don’t underestimate the amount of time required for a highly experienced DBA to become comfortable supporting a mission-critical system on a new platform.
6. If you have an application that requires a lot of SQL modification or code changes for compatibility, reduce the duration you maintain two branches of code by moving as much as possible to ANSI standard code that works on both Oracle and PostgreSQL. Then deploy these changes in your existing production system. This also reduces the changes that must be tested in the final conversion.
7. Automate where you can. Work with a partner that can build automated conversion scripts for your main code cleanups.

Remember, moving to Postgres is a great move for many companies, but you should also seek to improve your process by automating database schema changes. Once you’re up and running on PostgreSQL on-prem or on AWS, Liquibase can help you keep your database releases fast and safe.

Automating database changes and releases ensures you get the most out of your investment when moving from Oracle to PosgreSQL. Liquibase Enterprise tools allow you to set consistent database rules across the organization, simulate database changes to ensure zero downtime, and gives your teams insight into every database change for visibility into every database, making audits super simple.

Liquibase Enterprise currently supports four different varieties of PostgreSQL:

• PostgreSQL Community Version
• EnterpriseDB
• Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

Let us know if you’d like a demo of any of our PostgreSQL database release automation features.