Sybase ASE to PostgreSQL, United States

About Customer

Our client, based in the USA, is a global, independent information, data and market measurement company for fast-moving consumer goods, consumer behavior, and media. It provides television audience measurement and related services on a global and local basis. The Company serves media and advertising industries by providing data on media consumers so that they can maximize their marketability to both advertisers and end consumers. It provides consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers with information and insights that companies need to manage their brands, grow, and target customers. The Corporation is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and is currently a component of the S&P 500.

Challenge

With support ending in 2025 users of this Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise are looking for alternatives. The company turned to Ispirer made a decision to supersede outdated relational database management system to a more cutting-edge one. The best alternative for the company appeared to be PostgreSQL due to the number of internal reasons. For this project was chosen Ispirer SQLWays Wizard that provides automated database migration.

Database migration scope consisted of more than 1,500 tables, 100 GB of data, total number of lines of SQL code was more than 360,000. Due to the impressive scope of the project and its complexity the crucial factors for choosing a company for migration were tight schedule and relatively affordable solution. Taking into account the impressive experience of Ispirer in such projects and compliance with safety regulations Ispirer turned out to be the most eligible.

Solution

At the preparatory stage our company usually provides guidance to the client on the questions of possible solutions to the problem. Taking into account the information about the project, Ispirer offered several options: providing migration services and purchasing the software license. Owing to a sufficiently qualified client team, the best solution turned out to be a license with a small number of customizations. The Ispirer team assigned for the support of the project a team of highly qualified experts.

The customer bought the Toolkit license for 6 months that included free technical support from Ispirer migration experts assigned to the project. The process of migration was implemented at the customer’s premises. During the migration several difficulties occurred. After the communication of our specialist to the customer representative different ways to overcome the difficulties were developed. With the help of the attentive attitude and individualistic approach to every client all of them were successfully surmounted.

Several customizations were implemented which allowed to achieve the highest level of automation, including:

• User Defined datatypes
• Usage peculiarities of RETURN

After adding crucial extensions, the process of migration was completed on time. As a result, a more than 360,000 lines were efficiently migrated from Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise to PostgreSQL.

Benefits from Working with Ispirer

The migration solution provided by Ispirer helped the company to migrate Sybase ASE to PostgreSQL. As a result, the client succeeded in lowering risks from using the relational database management system that won’t be supported in future. Moreover, the customer was able to meet the required deadline and gain all the advantages from using up-to-date database.