# Migrating a MySQL Database to PostgreSQL

This command instructs pgloader to load data from a database connection. pgloader supports dynamically converting the schema of the source database and the indexes building.

A default set of casting rules are provided and might be overloaded and appended to by the command.

Here’s an example using as many options as possible, some of them even being defaults. Chances are you don’t need that complex a setup, don’t copy and paste it, use it only as a reference!

    LOAD DATABASE
         FROM      mysql://root@localhost/sakila
         INTO postgresql://localhost:54393/sakila

     WITH include drop, create tables, create indexes, reset sequences,
          workers = 8, concurrency = 1,
          multiple readers per thread, rows per range = 50000

      SET PostgreSQL PARAMETERS
          maintenance_work_mem to '128MB',
          work_mem to '12MB',
          search_path to 'sakila, public, "$user"'

      SET MySQL PARAMETERS
          net_read_timeout  = '120',
          net_write_timeout = '120'

     CAST type bigint when (= precision 20) to bigserial drop typemod,
          type date drop not null drop default using zero-dates-to-null,
          -- type tinyint to boolean using tinyint-to-boolean,
          type year to integer

     MATERIALIZE VIEWS film_list, staff_list

     -- INCLUDING ONLY TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/film/, 'actor'
     -- EXCLUDING TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~<ory>
     -- DECODING TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/messed/, ~/encoding/ AS utf8
     -- ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING 'film' RENAME TO 'films'
     -- ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/_list$/ SET SCHEMA 'mv'

     ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/_list$/, 'sales_by_store', ~/sales_by/
      SET SCHEMA 'mv'

     ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING 'film' RENAME TO 'films'
     ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/./ SET (fillfactor='40')

     ALTER SCHEMA 'sakila' RENAME TO 'pagila'

     BEFORE LOAD DO
       $$ create schema if not exists pagila; $$,
       $$ create schema if not exists mv;     $$,
       $$ alter database sakila set search_path to pagila, mv, public; $$;

The database command accepts the following clauses and options.

## MySQL Database Source Specification: FROM

Must be a connection URL pointing to a MySQL database.

If the connection URI contains a table name, then only this table is migrated from MySQL to PostgreSQL.

See the SOURCE CONNECTION STRING section above for details on how to write the connection string. The MySQL connection string accepts the same parameter sslmode as the PostgreSQL connection string, but the verify mode is not implemented (yet).

      mysql://[user[:password]@][netloc][:port][/dbname][?option=value&...]

    - *options*

      The same notation rules as found in the *Connection String* parts of the
      documentation apply, and we have a specific MySQL option: `useSSL`. The
      value for `useSSL` can be either `false` or `true`.

      If both `sslmode` and `useSSL` are used in the same connection string,
      pgloader behavior is undefined.

The MySQL connection string also accepts the useSSL parameter with values being either false or true.

Environment variables described in <http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/environment-variables.html> can be used as default values too. If the user is not provided, then it defaults to USER environment variable value. The password can be provided with the environment variable MYSQL_PWD. The host can be provided with the environment variable MYSQL_HOST and otherwise defaults to localhost. The port can be provided with the environment variable MYSQL_TCP_PORT and otherwise defaults to 3306.

## MySQL Database Migration Options: WITH

When loading from a MySQL database, the following options are supported, and the default WITH clause is: no truncate, create tables, include drop, create indexes, reset sequences, foreign keys, downcase identifiers, uniquify index names.

> - include drop

>   When this option is listed, pgloader drops all the tables in the target PostgreSQL database whose names appear in the MySQL database. This option allows for using the same command several times in a row until you figure out all the options, starting automatically from a clean environment. Please note that CASCADE is used to ensure that tables are dropped even if there are foreign keys pointing to them. This is precisely what include drop is intended to do: drop all target tables and recreate them.

>   Great care needs to be taken when using include drop, as it will cascade to all objects referencing the target tables, possibly including other tables that are not being loaded from the source DB.

> - include no drop

>   When this option is listed, pgloader will not include any DROP statement when loading the data.

> - truncate

>   When this option is listed, pgloader issue the TRUNCATE command against each PostgreSQL table just before loading data into it.

> - no truncate

>   When this option is listed, pgloader issues no TRUNCATE command.

> - disable triggers

>   When this option is listed, pgloader issues an ALTER TABLE … DISABLE TRIGGER ALL command against the PostgreSQL target table before copying the data, then the command ALTER TABLE … ENABLE TRIGGER ALL once the COPY is done.

>   This option allows loading data into a pre-existing table ignoring the foreign key constraints and user defined triggers and may result in invalid foreign key constraints once the data is loaded. Use with care.

> - create tables

>   When this option is listed, pgloader creates the table using the meta data found in the MySQL file, which must contain a list of fields with their data type. A standard data type conversion from DBF to PostgreSQL is done.

> - create no tables

>   When this option is listed, pgloader skips the creation of table before loading data, target tables must then already exist.

>   Also, when using create no tables pgloader fetches the metadata from the current target database and checks type casting, then will remove constraints and indexes prior to loading the data and install them back again once the loading is done.

> - create indexes

>   When this option is listed, pgloader gets the definitions of all the indexes found in the MySQL database and create the same set of index definitions against the PostgreSQL database.

> - create no indexes

>   When this option is listed, pgloader skips the creating indexes.

> - drop indexes

>   When this option is listed, pgloader drops the indexes in the target database before loading the data, and creates them again at the end of the data copy.

> - uniquify index names, preserve index names

>   MySQL index names are unique per-table whereas in PostgreSQL index names have to be unique per-schema. The default for pgloader is to change the index name by prefixing it with idx_OID where OID is the internal numeric identifier of the table the index is built against.

>   In somes cases like when the DDL are entirely left to a framework it might be sensible for pgloader to refrain from handling index unique names, that is achieved by using the preserve index names option.

>   The default is to uniquify index names.

>   Even when using the option preserve index names, MySQL primary key indexes named “PRIMARY” will get their names uniquified. Failing to do so would prevent the primary keys to be created again in PostgreSQL where the index names must be unique per schema.

> - drop schema

>   When this option is listed, pgloader drops the target schema in the target PostgreSQL database before creating it again and all the objects it contains. The default behavior doesn’t drop the target schemas.

> - foreign keys

>   When this option is listed, pgloader gets the definitions of all the foreign keys found in the MySQL database and create the same set of foreign key definitions against the PostgreSQL database.

> - no foreign keys

>   When this option is listed, pgloader skips creating foreign keys.

> - reset sequences

>   When this option is listed, at the end of the data loading and after the indexes have all been created, pgloader resets all the PostgreSQL sequences created to the current maximum value of the column they are attached to.

>   The options schema only and data only have no effects on this option.

> - reset no sequences

>   When this option is listed, pgloader skips resetting sequences after the load.

>   The options schema only and data only have no effects on this option.

> - downcase identifiers

>   When this option is listed, pgloader converts all MySQL identifiers (table names, index names, column names) to downcase, except for PostgreSQL reserved keywords.

>   The PostgreSQL reserved keywords are determined dynamically by using the system function pg_get_keywords().

> - quote identifiers

>   When this option is listed, pgloader quotes all MySQL identifiers so that their case is respected. Note that you will then have to do the same thing in your application code queries.

> - schema only

>   When this option is listed pgloader refrains from migrating the data over. Note that the schema in this context includes the indexes when the option create indexes has been listed.

> - data only

>   When this option is listed pgloader only issues the COPY statements, without doing any other processing.

> - single reader per thread, multiple readers per thread

>   The default is single reader per thread and it means that each MySQL table is read by a single thread as a whole, with a single SELECT statement using no WHERE clause.

>   When using multiple readers per thread pgloader may be able to divide the reading work into several threads, as many as the concurrency setting, which needs to be greater than 1 for this option to kick be activated.

>   For each source table, pgloader searches for a primary key over a single numeric column, or a multiple-column primary key index for which the first column is of a numeric data type (one of integer or bigint). When such an index exists, pgloader runs a query to find the min and max values on this column, and then split that range into many ranges containing a maximum of rows per range.

>   When the range list we then obtain contains at least as many ranges than our concurrency setting, then we distribute those ranges to each reader thread.

>   So when all the conditions are met, pgloader then starts as many reader thread as the concurrency setting, and each reader thread issues several queries with a WHERE id >= x AND id < y, where y - x = rows per range or less (for the last range, depending on the max value just obtained.

> - rows per range

>   How many rows are fetched per SELECT query when using multiple readers per thread, see above for details.

> - SET MySQL PARAMETERS

>   The SET MySQL PARAMETERS allows setting MySQL parameters using the MySQL SET command each time pgloader connects to it.

## MySQL Database Casting Rules

The command CAST introduces user-defined casting rules.

The cast clause allows to specify custom casting rules, either to overload the default casting rules or to amend them with special cases.

A casting rule is expected to follow one of the forms:

    type <mysql-type-name> [ <guard> ... ] to <pgsql-type-name> [ <option> ... ]
    column <table-name>.<column-name> [ <guards> ] to ...

It’s possible for a casting rule to either match against a MySQL data type or against a given column name in a given table name. That flexibility allows to cope with cases where the type tinyint might have been used as a boolean in some cases but as a smallint in others.

The casting rules are applied in order, the first match prevents following rules to be applied, and user defined rules are evaluated first.

The supported guards are:

> - when unsigned

>   The casting rule is only applied against MySQL columns of the source type that have the keyword unsigned in their data type definition.

>   Example of a casting rule using a unsigned guard:

>       type smallint when unsigned to integer drop typemod

> - when default ‘value’

>   The casting rule is only applied against MySQL columns of the source type that have given value, which must be a single-quoted or a double-quoted string.

> - when typemod expression

>   The casting rule is only applied against MySQL columns of the source type that have a typemod value matching the given typemod expression. The typemod is separated into its precision and scale components.

>   Example of a cast rule using a typemod guard:

>       type char when (= precision 1) to char keep typemod

>   This expression casts MySQL char(1) column to a PostgreSQL column of type char(1) while allowing for the general case char(N) will be converted by the default cast rule into a PostgreSQL type varchar(N).

> - with extra auto_increment

>   The casting rule is only applied against MySQL columns having the extra column auto_increment option set, so that it’s possible to target e.g. serial rather than integer.

>   The default matching behavior, when this option isn’t set, is to match both columns with the extra definition and without.

>   This means that if you want to implement a casting rule that target either serial or integer from a smallint definition depending on the auto_increment extra bit of information from MySQL, then you need to spell out two casting rules as following:

>       type smallint  with extra auto_increment
>         to serial drop typemod keep default keep not null,

>       type smallint
>         to integer drop typemod keep default keep not null

The supported casting options are:

> - drop default, keep default

>   When the option drop default is listed, pgloader drops any existing default expression in the MySQL database for columns of the source type from the CREATE TABLE statement it generates.

>   The spelling keep default explicitly prevents that behaviour and can be used to overload the default casting rules.

> - drop not null, keep not null, set not null

>   When the option drop not null is listed, pgloader drops any existing NOT NULL constraint associated with the given source MySQL datatype when it creates the tables in the PostgreSQL database.

>   The spelling keep not null explicitly prevents that behaviour and can be used to overload the default casting rules.

>   When the option set not null is listed, pgloader sets a NOT NULL constraint on the target column regardless whether it has been set in the source MySQL column.

> - drop typemod, keep typemod

>   When the option drop typemod is listed, pgloader drops any existing typemod definition (e.g. precision and scale) from the datatype definition found in the MySQL columns of the source type when it created the tables in the PostgreSQL database.

>   The spelling keep typemod explicitly prevents that behaviour and can be used to overload the default casting rules.

> - using

>   This option takes as its single argument the name of a function to be found in the pgloader.transforms Common Lisp package. See above for details.

>   It’s possible to augment a default cast rule (such as one that applies against ENUM data type for example) with a transformation function by omitting entirely the type parts of the casting rule, as in the following example:

>       column enumerate.foo using empty-string-to-null

## MySQL Views Support

MySQL views support allows pgloader to migrate view as if they were base tables. This feature then allows for on-the-fly transformation from MySQL to PostgreSQL, as the view definition is used rather than the base data.

### MATERIALIZE VIEWS

This clause allows you to implement custom data processing at the data source by providing a view definition against which pgloader will query the data. It’s not possible to just allow for plain SQL because we want to know a lot about the exact data types of each column involved in the query output.

This clause expect a comma separated list of view definitions, each one being either the name of an existing view in your database or the following expression:

    *name* `AS` `$$` *sql query* `$$`

The name and the sql query will be used in a CREATE VIEW statement at the beginning of the data loading, and the resulting view will then be dropped at the end of the data loading.

### MATERIALIZE ALL VIEWS

Same behaviour as MATERIALIZE VIEWS using the dynamic list of views as returned by MySQL rather than asking the user to specify the list.

## MySQL Partial Migration

### INCLUDING ONLY TABLE NAMES MATCHING

Introduce a comma separated list of table names or regular expression used to limit the tables to migrate to a sublist.

Example:

    including only table names matching ~/film/, 'actor'

### EXCLUDING TABLE NAMES MATCHING

Introduce a comma separated list of table names or regular expression used to exclude table names from the migration. This filter only applies to the result of the INCLUDING filter.

    excluding table names matching ~<ory>

## MySQL Encoding Support

### DECODING TABLE NAMES MATCHING

Introduce a comma separated list of table names or regular expressions used to force the encoding to use when processing data from MySQL. If the data encoding known to you is different from MySQL’s idea about it, this is the option to use.

    decoding table names matching ~/messed/, ~/encoding/ AS utf8

You can use as many such rules as you need, all with possibly different encodings.

## MySQL Schema Transformations

### ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING

Introduce a comma separated list of table names or regular expressions that you want to target in the pgloader ALTER TABLE command. Available actions are SET SCHEMA, RENAME TO, and SET:

    ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/_list$/, 'sales_by_store', ~/sales_by/
     SET SCHEMA 'mv'

    ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING 'film' RENAME TO 'films'

    ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/./ SET (fillfactor='40')

    ALTER TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/./ SET TABLESPACE 'pg_default'

You can use as many such rules as you need. The list of tables to be migrated is searched in pgloader memory against the ALTER TABLE matching rules, and for each command pgloader stops at the first matching criteria (regexp or string).

No ALTER TABLE command is sent to PostgreSQL, the modification happens at the level of the pgloader in-memory representation of your source database schema. In case of a name change, the mapping is kept and reused in the foreign key and index support.

The SET () action takes effect as a WITH clause for the CREATE TABLE command that pgloader will run when it has to create a table.

The SET TABLESPACE action takes effect as a TABLESPACE clause for the CREATE TABLE command that pgloader will run when it has to create a table.

## MySQL Migration: limitations

The database command currently only supports MySQL source database and has the following limitations:

> - Views are not migrated,

>   Supporting views might require implementing a full SQL parser for the MySQL dialect with a porting engine to rewrite the SQL against PostgreSQL, including renaming functions and changing some constructs.

>   While it’s not theoretically impossible, don’t hold your breath.

> - Triggers are not migrated

>   The difficulty of doing so is not yet assessed.

> - Of the geometric datatypes, only the POINT database has been covered. The other ones should be easy enough to implement now, it’s just not done yet.

## Default MySQL Casting Rules

When migrating from MySQL the following Casting Rules are provided:

Numbers:

    type int with extra auto_increment to serial when (< precision 10)
    type int with extra auto_increment to bigserial when (<= 10 precision)
    type int to int       when  (< precision 10)
    type int to bigint    when  (<= 10 precision)
    type tinyint   with extra auto_increment to serial
    type smallint  with extra auto_increment to serial
    type mediumint with extra auto_increment to serial
    type bigint    with extra auto_increment to bigserial

    type tinyint to boolean when (= 1 precision) using tinyint-to-boolean

    type bit when (= 1 precision) to boolean drop typemod using bits-to-boolean
    type bit to bit drop typemod using bits-to-hex-bitstring

    type bigint when signed to bigint drop typemod
    type bigint when (< 19 precision) to numeric drop typemod

    type tinyint when unsigned to smallint   drop typemod
    type smallint when unsigned to integer  drop typemod
    type mediumint when unsigned to integer  drop typemod
    type integer when unsigned to bigint    drop typemod

    type tinyint to smallint   drop typemod
    type smallint to smallint  drop typemod
    type mediumint to integer  drop typemod
    type integer to integer    drop typemod
    type bigint to bigint      drop typemod

    type float to float        drop typemod
    type double to double precision drop typemod

    type numeric to numeric keep typemod
    type decimal to decimal keep typemod

Texts:

    type char       to char keep typemod using remove-null-characters
    type varchar    to varchar keep typemod using remove-null-characters
    type tinytext   to text using remove-null-characters
    type text       to text using remove-null-characters
    type mediumtext to text using remove-null-characters
    type longtext   to text using remove-null-characters

Binary:

    type binary     to bytea using byte-vector-to-bytea
    type varbinary  to bytea using byte-vector-to-bytea
    type tinyblob   to bytea using byte-vector-to-bytea
    type blob       to bytea using byte-vector-to-bytea
    type mediumblob to bytea using byte-vector-to-bytea
    type longblob   to bytea using byte-vector-to-bytea

Date:

    type datetime when default "0000-00-00 00:00:00" and not null
      to timestamptz drop not null drop default
          using zero-dates-to-null

    type datetime when default "0000-00-00 00:00:00"
      to timestamptz drop default
          using zero-dates-to-null

    type datetime with extra on update current timestamp when not null
      to timestamptz drop not null drop default
         using zero-dates-to-null

    type datetime with extra on update current timestamp
      to timestamptz drop default
         using zero-dates-to-null

    type timestamp when default "0000-00-00 00:00:00" and not null
      to timestamptz drop not null drop default
          using zero-dates-to-null

    type timestamp when default "0000-00-00 00:00:00"
      to timestamptz drop default
          using zero-dates-to-null

    type date when default "0000-00-00" to date drop default
          using zero-dates-to-null

    type date to date
    type datetime to timestamptz
    type timestamp to timestamptz
    type year to integer drop typemod

Geometric:

    type geometry   to point using convert-mysql-point
    type point      to point using convert-mysql-point
    type linestring to path using convert-mysql-linestring

Enum types are declared inline in MySQL and separately with a CREATE TYPE command in PostgreSQL, so each column of Enum Type is converted to a type named after the table and column names defined with the same labels in the same order.

When the source type definition is not matched in the default casting rules nor in the casting rules provided in the command, then the type name with the typemod is used.