MySQL Migration Toolkit

The MySQL Migration Toolkit is a nice easy to use Wizard GUI tool for migrating databases to MySQL. The following site http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/migration-toolkit/ has some really nice tutorials for how to migrate the following databases to MySQL:

• SQL Server
• Oracle
• Access

The MySQL Migration Toolkit will facilitate the migration of the following database schema objects:

• Tables
• Indexes
• Views
• Assists with Stored Procedure Migration
• Assists with Trigger Migration

Some features that stand out about the MySQL Migration Toolkit:

• The MySQL Migration Toolkit allows direct server to server migration. The migration tookkit can run remotely.
• Data can be transfered online or a snapshot of the data can be stored for executing a transfer offline at a later time. A backup can be created of the stored data as well.

Migrating Access to MySQL
MySQL is an excellent migration strategy for organizations using Access. Migrating to MySQL provides the following benefits to existing Access environments:

• Extremely low startup costs.
• Ability to leverage the LAMP stack and Web 2.0.
• Portability to major releases of Linux, Unix and Mac OS platforms.
• Increased operational flexibility from a closed proprietary environment to open source.
  
• Significantly increased scalability.
  

Migrating SQL Server to MySQL

MySQL is an excellent migration strategy for organizations using SQL Server. Migrating to MySQL provides the following benefits to existing SQL Server environments:

• Extremely low startup costs.
• Ability to leverage the LAMP stack and Web 2.0.
• Portability to major releases of Linux, Unix and Mac OS platforms.
• Increased operational flexibility from a closed proprietary environment to open source.
• Relatively low cost increased scalability compared to SQL Server scalability costs.
  

Oracle and MySQL Environments

I believe Oracle and MySQL play well together more than any other two RDBMS systems.

• MySQL does well in the small and medium database range and supports the LAMP stack and Web 2.0.
• For web applications that do not leverage a lot of database features. Using MySQL at the lower end can greatly reduce the total cost of ownership.
  
• Oracle and MySQL can play very well together to maximize what a customer needs to do while minimizing cost.
• Oracle offers tremendous scalability and an incredible amount of features to address complex problems in large organizations.
  
• MySQL offers relatively low cost increased scalability compared to Oracle scalability costs. No costs associated with using partitioning and replication. MySQL Cluster is a fraction of the cost of running Oracle RAC.