Dear friends,
Because PostgreSQL is a mature database, most new PostgreSQL users are
certainly migrating from other systems (mainly Oracle, DB2, MySQL, MS SQL,
etc...). So, if we offer solutions for migration, we can probably boost
pgAdmin3. This is no news...
At first, this could be only a migration of database schemas (tables,
constraints, views, etc...). Not server-side languages like PL.
In this context, I asked a question recently on hackers about the possibility
to create custom data types in PostgreSQL mapping Oracle data types. For
example, I asked if it was possible to mapp Oracle nvarchar2(lenght) to
PostgreSQL varchar(lenght).
The aswer is that it is not possible, because types like "varchar(lenght)" are
hard coded into PostgreSQL parser.
So, to date, the only solution to read an Oracle ASCII dump into PostgreSQL is
to convert the data types manually. Search "nvarchar2(lenght)", Replace by
"varchar(lenght)".
No news ... now we come to the point.
What if I added a "Migration" section on pgAdmin3 web site. At first, this
section would only list type mappings for MySQL/Oracle/DB2/MS SQL with
PostgreSQL types, as well as any information related to the migration of
constraints, views and default values.
In a (close?) future, this would allow pgAdmin3 to include a series of Regexp
that would replace foreing data types with native PostgreSQL data types.
What do you think?
Best regards, Jean-Michel