Transfer MS SQL 2005 Database to MySQL

Ok…did you ever have one of those days where at the end of the day you’re sitting there going….man I wish I would have known that earlier…I could have saved myself a lot of time and heartache.  Well that was me today.

You would think with all of the databases I work with I would have had this come up, but surprisingly enough I’ve never had to migrate or transfer an entire database structure from MS SQL 2005 to MySQL.  I googled just about every combination out there and came up with all of these programs from overseas that claimed to

MySQL Migration Toolkit is Just What You Need!

work perfectly, but even in their trial modes they failed miserably.

The Solution…MySQL Migration Toolkit

I tried one more google which happened me on to an article which was written by a colleague who wanted to let people know about turning on TCP/IP addressing in MSSQL 2005 if they were having trouble using the MySQL Migration Toolkit.  I quickly clicked on the link for the MySQL Migration Toolkit (which is a part of the MySQL

GUI Tools) and in almost 5-10 minutes later I had my entire MSSQL database moved to MySQL.

Now it seems a little bit more complex than it actually is.  Literally all you really need are the username/passwords for the respective databases and the name of the database you will need to connect to and obviously transfer to MySQL.  The only pitfall I ran into was during the creation of one of the tables in the database where it didn’t like the default of a 1 or “true” value in a boolean field.  I went ahead and clicked the “Advanced” button at the bottom, looked at the SQL statement, took out the DEFAULT (1), and then clicked the “Recreate Objects” button.  It worked like a charm after that.

Don’t Have “One of those Days”

So hopefully someone will also google this and if I’ve been taught well by my SEO expert friend Mat Siltala has taught me correctly….you’ll have found this article and will already be moving on to your next task of the day.  Happy Migrating!

Doug.