Bio

My current job: Professional Service Consultant, PostgreSQL specialist at credativ GmbH
Education: Engineer’s degree in Automation and robotics, Technical University Ostrava, Czechia
Experience:
* 33+ years of production experience with different databases: PostgreSQL 13 years, BigQuery 7y, Oracle 15y, MySQL 12y, Elasticsearch 5y, MS SQL 5y, Sybase ASE, FoxPro
* 10+ years of experience with high volume and velocity data ingestion pipelines, Data Analysis, Data Warehouse and Data Lakehouse architecture
* 3+ years of practical experience with different ML / LLMs / AI including their architecture, principles and practical usage.
* Lately frequently presenting on PostgreSQL conferences and meetups in Europe

Talk Description: Migrating Legacy & Proprietary Databases to PostgreSQL

European organizations and companies are increasingly re-evaluating proprietary database dependencies as digital sovereignty becomes more critical than ever. This talk serves as a pragmatic field guide for migrating from legacy or vendor-locked databases Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase ASE, Db2, SQL Anywhere, MySQL to PostgreSQL. Drawing from years of hands-on experience in heterogeneous migrations and tool development, we will explore a comprehensive decision framework for successful transitions. The session compares offline strategies (dump/restore, ETL, bulk COPY) against online, near-zero-downtime approaches (CDC, logical replication, dual-write), with a special focus on designing reversible cutovers to minimize operational risk. We will discuss a toolbox for schema and SQL translation, addressing challenges like LOBs, time zones, collations, and procedural code conversion. We will demonstrate advanced validation techniques leveraging checksums, reconciliation queries, advanced statistics, and end-to-end testing beyond simple row counts. The talk with show a comparative matrix of different solutions, and highlight lessons learned from real-world migrations ranging from small applications to multi-TB enterprise systems.

Key takeaways:
- A practical decision framework for migrations
- Comparison of different migration tools
- Size is usually not the biggest issue - complexity is
- Data validation beyond row counts