Quickly and Securely Migrate Databases to AWS using AWS Database Migration Service

Introduction

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS), which helps enterprise customers quickly and securely migrate their databases to AWS, has just launched a new feature called Schema Conversion. DMS Schema Conversion is a fully managed AWS DMS feature that automatically evaluates and converts the database schema into a format compatible with the target database service in AWS, enabling you to modernize database and analytics workloads. DMS Schema Conversion is designed for customers who plan to migrate their database and analytics workloads to AWS to help reduce licensing costs and improve performance, agility, and resiliency by embracing cloud and database modernization.

DMS schema conversion in AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) makes database migration between different database types more predictable. Use DMS Schema Conversion to assess the complexity of your migration for your source data provider and to convert code objects and database schemas. You can then apply the converted code to your target database.

DMS Schema Conversion automatically converts your source database schemas and most database code objects into a format compatible with the target database. This conversion includes tables, stored procedures, views, functions, synonyms, data types, and so on. All objects that DMS Schema Conversion cannot automatically convert are marked. You can convert these objects manually to complete the migration.

What is AWS DMS?

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) is a cloud service that allows you to migrate relational databases, data warehouses, NoSQL databases, and other types of data storage. You can use AWS DMS to migrate data to the AWS Cloud or between a combination of cloud and on-premises setups.

Supported Source and Target Data Providers

In DMS Schema Conversion, you create a data provider to describe the source and target databases. Each data provider stores information about the type of data storage and location of your database. Your source data provider can be a self-service machine running on-premises or an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance.

DMS Schema Conversion supports the following data providers as sources for your migration projects:

• Microsoft SQL Server version 2008 R2 and higher
• Oracle version 10.2 and later, 11g and up to 12.2, 18c, and 19c

You can use DMS Schema Conversion to convert the schemas for your source data provider to the target machine. This machine can run on an Amazon EC2 instance or an Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) DB instance.

DMS Schema Conversion supports the following data providers as targets for your migration projects:

• MySQL version 8.x
• PostgreSQL version 14.x

Schema Conversion Features

• DMS Schema Conversion automatically manages the AWS Cloud resources required for your database migration project. These resources include data providers, instance profiles, and AWS Secrets Manager secrets. They also include AWS Identity and Amazon S3 buckets, Access Management (IAM) roles, and migration projects.
• With DMS Schema Conversion, you can connect to the source database, read metadata, and generate database migration assessment reports. You can then save the message to an Amazon S3 bucket. With these reports, you get a summary of your schema conversion tasks and details on items that DMS Schema Conversion cannot automatically convert to your target database. Database migration assessment reports help evaluate how much of a project DMS Schema Conversion can automate.
• After connecting to the source and target data providers, DMS Schema Conversion can convert your existing source database schemas to the target database engine. You can select any schema item from the source database to convert. After converting the database code in DMS Schema Conversion, you can view the source code and the converted code. You can also save the converted SQL code to an Amazon S3 bucket.
• Before you convert the source database schemas, you can set transformation rules. You can use transformation rules to change the data type of columns, move objects from one schema to another, and change object names. You can apply transformation rules to databases, schemas, tables, and columns.
• Before you convert the source database schemas, you can set transformation rules. You can use transformation rules to change the data type of columns, move objects from one schema to another, and change object names. You can apply transformation rules to schemas, databases, tables, and columns.

Schema Conversion Limitations

The following restrictions apply when using DMS Schema Conversion to convert a database schema:

• DMS Schema Conversion does not support a command line interface (CLI).
• A migration project cannot be saved and used offline.
• You cannot apply filters to the source and target database trees to display only those database objects that meet the filter clause.
• The DMS Schema Conversion extension package does not include AWS Lambda functions that emulate email sending, job scheduling, and other functions in your converted code.
• You cannot edit the SQL code for the source and target databases in a DMS schema conversion migration project. To edit the SQL code of your source database, use your regular SQL editor. To add the updated code to the migration project, choose Refresh from the database. To edit the converted code, save it as an SQL script. Then edit it in the code editor and apply the updated code to the database manually.
• Migration rules in DMS Schema Conversion do not support changing column ordering. You also cannot use migration rules to move objects to a new schema.

Conclusion

With DMS Schema Conversion built into DMS, customers can avoid the hassle of implementing partial solutions, especially for heterogeneous migrations. This feature allows you to convert the schema, views, stored procedures, and functions from the source database to the schema for the target database service. With a few clicks, you can generate an evaluation report that shows the complexity of the schema conversion. This report provides prescriptive guidance on how to resolve potential incompatibilities between the source and target database engines. After schema code conversion, migrating your database and analytics portfolio takes hours instead of weeks or months, allowing customers to complete the complete database migration process from discovery and analysis to schema code conversion to data migration using a single AWS dashboard.

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