DB Best recently completed a Sybase ASE database migration to SQL Server project for a global leader in security technology . Faced with skyrocketing license costs, our customer was running hundreds of Sybase ASE databases that were going out of support on an aging IBM hardware platform on the AIX platform. The PowerBuilder applications were also going out of support and needed to get upgraded. By migrating to SQL Server on commodity Intel based servers, our customer found that they could exceed their performance needs and lower overall licensing and operating costs. Check out the video below to see how we approached the migration project.
Reasons to migrate from Sybase to SQL ServerOur customer was faced with several challenges that prompted a serious look at migrating of their existing against platform. These challenges included:
Enormous Sybase ASE license costs to maintain support of their older databases. Inability to upgrade their aging IBM platform running AIX to support more memory to meet their performance needs. Lack of talent needed to operate the AIX platform with the older version of Sybase ASE and innovate using the older version of PowerBuilder.Backed by the migration experience of DB Best and the lower licensing costs of SQL Server, our customer used the savings to fund the migration project. More importantly, the availability of SQL Server developers with the windows Server platform provides our customer with the ability to innovate faster with lower operating costs going forward.
Overview of the customer’s systemThe original customer’s system consists of two separate subsystems.
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The first one includes hundreds of small Sybase ASE databases and two PowerBuilder applications which interacted with these databases. The other subsystem included one big Sybase ASE database and one PowerBuilder application. Differences in data migration process
Considering the differences of two customer’s systems, we’ve used two different data migration approaches for the each of them.
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For the large Sybase database we used SQL Server’s Bulk Copy Program (BCP) to transfer the data to the new SQL Server database. Because of the data requirements in the much smaller databases for the other system, we needed a way to automate the initial data load and then capture changes to the data so that the SQL Server databases were kept in sync with the original production databases. For this, we used our own DB Best Database Compare Suite to copy the data and keep the data in sync between pre-deployment SQL Server databases and the production Sybase ASE databases.
We used our 12 step database migration process for both systems. This included: database and application assessment, schema conversion, application conversion, scripts conversion, integration of 3 rd party applications, data migration, functional testing, performance tuning, integration and development, training and knowledge transfer, documentation and version control, as well as post production support.
For the schema conversion step, we were able to convert the majority of the database objects automatically using the Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant 7.0 for Sybase . The rest of the Sybase ASE database objects were converted to SQL Server manually using the guidance we prepared for Microsoft in the white paper Guide to migrating from Sybase ASE to SQL Server 2014 and Azure SQL Database using SSMA . We also used SSMA to convert the Sybase ASE specific SQL statements that were embedded in the existing PowerBuilder applications.
After implementing the database changes, we reconnected to PowerBuilder applications to the new SQL Server databases and worked with our customer through the testing process.
This was relatively complex database migration project given the number of databases and the need to keep the test and production databases in sync to facilitate testing and a smooth transition to SQL Server. Be sure to check out our other Sybase ASE to SQL Server video blog post for a global leader in legal content services So, if you want to jumpstart your database migration projects and increase performance of your database systems, please,contact us.
Resources Guide to migrating from Sybase ASE to SQL Server 2014 and Azure SQL Database using SSMA Migrating critical apps from Sybase ASE to SQL Server Sybase to SQL Server Migration Datasheet