Migration Solutions Center for SQL Server 2008
What is your biggest challenge when you need to upgrade a SQL Server 2008?
Do you have a clear process of migrating non-SQL Server databases to SQL Server?
Whatever is the reason or need to install SQL Server 2008 you must review the installation requirements, system configuration checks and more important the existing application code/TSQL scripts execution against 2008 version. The first 2 steps of installation & configuration checks can be perform by using SQL Server setup to upgrade from previous versions. As usual the SQL configuration Manager utility is best of configure the newly installed SQL instance, and regardless of whether you use the SQL Server Installation Wizard or the command prompt to install SQL Server, the process to plan for upgrade is a definitive requirement as whole of SQL Server planning process. On this topic in the recent times within the Community one of the talks that I have presented was Upgrading to SQL Server 2005-2008_Notes-and-BestPractices where I'm going to write a technical article to define more on the step by step process.
Coming back to actual subjective discussion of Migration Process of SQL Server from other data sources such as Oracle, Sybase & Access - SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA). SSMA is a free tool offered by Microsoft for migrating non-SQL Server databases to SQL Server, such as Oracle, SYBASE & Access. The main process of SSMA is to convert database objects (including stored procedures) to SQL Server database objects, loads those objects into SQL Server, migrates data from Oracle to SQL Server, and then validates the migration of code and data.
To provide further help & perspective guidance to the customers Microsoft has launched a Migration Solution Center, it is claimed that this site offers a clear process for executing successful migrations or upsizing existing databases to SQL Server. On this site, the freely downloadable SQL Server Migration Assistants (SSMAs) reduce the efforts required to move databases from Access, Oracle, and Sybase to SQL Server. These tools are updated for SQL Server 2008 can be downloaded now to perform assessments, move data and schema, and automate the process of database migrations to SQL Server, you can download SQL Server Migration Assistants for further testing.