October 10, 2024

MS Access to MySQL: automating database migration

Moving data from desktop DBMS to cloud warehouses is a long-term modern trend. It is not surprising that many organizations consider migration from MS Access to more powerful distributed database management systems like MySQL and its variations. Every database professional understands that data migration is a hard procedure demanding a lot of resources for complex corporate-scale warehouses. It is not affordable to run the task manually due to high risk of data loss or corruption. Fortunately, there are special tools to simplify and automate database migration from MS Access to MySQL that can process all database objects except forms and related Visual Basic code. 

Database migration solutions for MS Access and MySQL are ranged from scripts for IT professionals to turn-key commercial tools that can be used by everyone. In order to find the right tool, the following features must be verified:

  1. The migration tool must support all modern versions of MySQL and its popular forks such as MariaDB and Percona 
  2. The converter must handle main database objects such as tables, data, indexes, constraints and queries
  3. The product should be able not only to create new MySQL database, but also to merge or synchronize existing MySQL database with MS Access data
  4. The migration tool must support converting Microsoft Access database into MySQL script file for those cases when direct connection to the target server is not available
  5. And finally, the product must support command line arguments for scripting and scheduling the database migration procedure

MS Access to MySQL converter developed by Intelligent Converters, a software company working in database migration field since 2001, meets all requirements listed above. Moreover, the product can migrate not only table data but also row sets of SELECT-queries. This flexible capability can be used for the following tasks.

  1. Migrate particular columns with renaming: SELECT FName as FirstName, LName as LastName FROM Table1
  2. Exclude from migration rows containing NULL values: SELECT * FROM Table2 WHERE not isnull(Comments)
  3. Filter rows to migrate by some criteria: SELECT * FROM Table3 WHERE ID > 1000

MS Access to MySQL converter has intuitive user-friendly interface and comprehensive help system that makes it useful for wide range of users, not only for database professionals. The product stores all conversion settings into profile for reusing it in next run. 

The database migration tool is supplied with trial version that converts only 50 records per table and does not convert foreign keys and views. As every software product provided by Intelligent Converters, MS Access to MySQL conversion tool is supplied with one-year subscription for updates and 24/7 technical support. 

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