Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!wdl1!eric
From: eric@wdl1.wdl.fac.com (Eric Kuhnen)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: issues/effort to convert databases
Message-ID: <310002@wdl1.wdl.fac.com>
Date: 11 Jul 90 21:58:36 GMT
References: <1990Jul6.191941.185@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Lines: 22

In article on database transfers, John E. Girard writes:

>I am looking for information on the relative effort, trials
>and tribulations of migrating data and structure between
>different database products.  Does anyone have any boiler-plates
>or particular words of wisdom/rules-of-thumb on the subject?
>Also would be interested in estimates of the relative effort
>involved.

<Am posting here; mail router bounced address.>

1)	Stay within the same query language when moving between DBMS's.

2)	Use delimited ASCII files for data, employing an obscure delimiter.
	For example, tab stops would not be good for conversion to Ingres
	since Ingres doesn't like tabs.  Commas are a poor choice because
	some text data contains commas.  The ` character (backward single
	quote) is less common and therefore a good choice.  Even better
	are multiple-character delimiters like |\| or <?> which are 
	easily constructed and fairly unique.

"Q"