Why migrate your MySQL applications to SQL Server 2017?

There could be a time when your MySQL database solution evolves into a mission-critical solution. Suddenly, service level agreements for areas like security, high availability, disaster recovery, scalability, data governance, becomes an issue. Likewise, the solution may require integration with new capabilities like machine learning, data lake, graph, and in-memory computing.

Microsoft SQL Server 2017 powers your entire data estate by supporting structured and unstructured data sources. It builds on previous versions of SQL Server, which have been industry leading for four years in a row and have held a leading spot in TPC-E benchmark testing. SQL Server 2017 scales to accommodate petabytes of data through Polybase by using T-SQL over any data. SQL Server has also been the least vulnerable database over the last seven years.

Why migrate to sql server 2017

When evaluating your rationale for migrating, consider the detail provided in the following sections.

Security

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) public security board, SQL Server has the lowest number of reported security vulnerabilities across the major database vendors (NSIT, 2016).

Security features provide server-side security measures that vastly simplify the process of keeping data safe from unauthorized access without the need to modify existing client applications. These features include:

  • Auditing, which enables teams to monitor access and track potentially suspicious activity.
  • Transparent Data Encryption, which protects data at rest at a file level.
  • Row-Level Security, which enables developers to implement fine-grained access control over rows in a database table.
  • Dynamic Data Masking, which enables customers to designate how much of the sensitive data to reveal with minimal impact on the application layer.
  • Always Encrypted, which secures data in motion and at rest.

Performance

SQL Server holds the top:

  • TPC-E performance benchmarks for transaction processing.
  • TPC-H performance benchmarks for data warehousing.
  • Performance benchmarks with leading business applications.

In addition, in April 2017 Hewlett Packard Enterprise published a new TPC-H 1TB world record with SQL Server 2017 running on Linux.

These key SQL Server 2017 features that make this possible include:

  • Columnstore, which provides column-based data storage and processing to achieve up to 10 times the query performance and data compression of row-based storage.
  • In-memory OLTP, which brings transaction processing to memory-optimized tables at more than 2.5 times the speed of disk-based tables.

The power of SQL Server now on Linux and Container Instances

SQL Server 2017 offers the best performance and security features, and they are now available on all supported platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Azure Container Instances.

With these capabilities available on all editions of SQL Server, organizations can choose their deployment environment by operational need rather than desired features.

Adaptive Query Processing feature family

New in SQL Server 2017, Adaptive Query Processing introduces additional capabilities that allow the SQL Server query processor to modify plan choices based on runtime characteristics. During query processing and optimization, the cardinality estimation (CE) process is responsible for estimating the number of rows processed at each step in an execution plan. Inaccurate estimates can cause slow query response time, excessive resource utilization (CPU, Memory, IO), and reduced throughput and concurrency. To improve CE techniques, SQL Server 2017 introduces a new feature family: adaptive query processing (AQP). AQP improves handling of the more intractable CE issues.

Automatic plan correction

SQL Server 2017 also includes new features designed to detect plan choice regressions and provide recommendations on how to fix problems. These automatic plan correction features help to maintain the performance of data queries, even when application changes occur.

SQL Graph

Customers want more than the ability to manage large volumes of data; they also need to analyze existing data more effectively to understand its relationships and patterns. Querying data from a relational schema by using traditional SQL queries can be a complex task. SQL Server 2017 introduces SQL Graph to make modeling and analyzing relationships easier by allowing users to handle relationships in a more flexible and agile way.

Resumable Online Index Rebuild

Planning, maintaining, and managing a large index online can be challenging. The bigger the index, the more difficult index maintenance becomes. Reorganizing and rebuilding indexes can be especially cumbersome. Resumable Online Index Rebuild in SQL Server 2017 enables continuation of an online index rebuild operation after a failure (such as a failover to a replica or insufficient disk space). Resumable Online Index Rebuild also enables pausing and later resuming an online index rebuild operation. For example, you might need to temporarily free up system resources to execute a high-priority task, or complete the index rebuild at another time if the available maintenance window is too short for a large table. Finally, Resumable Online Index Rebuild does not require significant log space, which allows you to perform log truncation while the resumable rebuild operation is running.

In-Memory OLTP enhancements in SQL Server 2017

First appearing as a feature in SQL Server 2014, in-memory technology for SQL Server dramatically improves the throughput and latency of SQL Server OLTP capabilities. This functionality is designed to meet the requirements of the most demanding transaction processing applications, and Microsoft has worked closely with several companies to prove these gains. SQL Server 2017 adds features to improve the performance and supportability of In-Memory OLTP workloads. In addition, we have removed many limitations on tables and stored procedures to make it easier to migrate applications and take advantage of the benefits of In-Memory OLTP.

A leader in MySQL to SQL Server migrations

The DB Best team developed a unique methodology for migrating MySQL applications to Microsoft SQL Server and proved it many times over with hundreds of customers. Being an architect and the original creator of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA), the DB Best team is THE database migration expert you can trust with your project.

Based on our vast migration experience, the DB Best team developed our in-house products Database Compare Suite and DB Best Migration Platform, which greatly complement SSMA for MySQL.

Here are the DB Best tools that we’ve developed to optimize the MySQL to SQL Server migration process.

Getting started

Sometimes you need a helping hand to get you started. Here are some of our offers to help with assessments, using SSMA, or developing a future-state roadmap.

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LEVERAGING YOUR EXISTING INVESTMENTS IN MIGRATION TECHNOLOGIES

Data integration tools play a big part in the successful migration of MySQL databases to SQL Server. Ideally, you want to minimize the changes to your data integration processes.

Our team can support open-source data integration tools such as:

We have extensive experience in the following commercial platforms.

Supporting your SQL Server solutions after the migration

As part of our migration project, we offer training, support, consulting, and managed services for your SQL Server solutions. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of maintaining the day-to-day operations of your databases and applications, be sure to check out our Operational Data Management service.

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Learn more

We have a great set of blog posts and data sheets to help you better understand our capabilities as the leader in database migration services and prove out possibilities and expertise in moving MySQL workloads to Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SQL Azure.

Blog posts

Database Compare Suite update 4.3 — MySQL support and other features
6 May 2016 admin

We’re excited to bring you yet another update of the Database Compare Suite tool which adds several major features such as MySQL database dialect support, ODBC support, settings comp...

Database Compare Suite update 4.11 with Vertica Analytics Platform support
4 September 2017 Andrey Ivanov

We’re happy to announce the latest release of DB Best Database Compare Suite. The new version marked 4.11 brings support for Vertica Analytics Platform. Learn more about the ultimate...

SSMA for Oracle 7.0 — What's New — Migrating to SQL Server 2016 Temporal Tables
2 September 2016 Bill Ramos

The new version of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) 7.0 now supports direct migration to several new features introduced in SQL Server 2016. One of these new features is the direc...

SSMA for Oracle 7.0 — Overview of Data Migration Features
5 December 2016 Bill Ramos

DB Best uses a 12-step migration process to make sure all bases are covered as part of a typical migration project. Data migration is a critical part of a database migration projects a...

Reference data sheet

Modernizations to Microsoft's Data Platform
21 September 2016 Bill Ramos

Cloud services such as Microsoft Azure, coupled with database technologies like SQL Server, enable organizations to quickly create and scale solutions that solve challenges and fuel ne...

Reference white paper

eBook: Database Migration
9 August 2018 Bill Ramos

DB Best goes well beyond other migration service providers. We take a vested interest in your migration strategy, combining innovation with an accelerated ROI that meets your business ...

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