# Migrating a SQLite database to PostgreSQL

This command instructs pgloader to load data from a SQLite file. Automatic discovery of the schema is supported, including build of the indexes.

Here’s an example:

    load database
         from sqlite:///Users/dim/Downloads/lastfm_tags.db
         into postgresql:///tags

     with include drop, create tables, create indexes, reset sequences

      set work_mem to '16MB', maintenance_work_mem to '512 MB';

The sqlite command accepts the following clauses and options.

## SQLite Database Source Specification: FROM

Path or HTTP URL to a SQLite file, might be a .zip file.

## SQLite Database Migration Options: WITH

When loading from a SQLite database, the following options are supported:

When loading from a SQLite database, the following options are supported, and the default WITH clause is: no truncate, create tables, include drop, create indexes, reset sequences, downcase identifiers, encoding ‘utf-8’.

> - include drop

>   When this option is listed, pgloader drops all the tables in the target PostgreSQL database whose names appear in the SQLite 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 SQLite file, which must contain a list of fields with their data type. A standard data type conversion from SQLite 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 SQLite 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.

> - 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.

> - 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.

> - schema only

>   When this option is listed pgloader will refrain 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.

> - encoding

>   This option allows to control which encoding to parse the SQLite text data with. Defaults to UTF-8.

## SQLite 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.

## SQlite Database Partial Migrations

### INCLUDING ONLY TABLE NAMES LIKE

Introduce a comma separated list of table name patterns used to limit the tables to migrate to a sublist.

Example:

    including only table names like 'Invoice%'

### EXCLUDING TABLE NAMES LIKE

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

    excluding table names like 'appointments'

## Default SQLite Casting Rules

When migrating from SQLite the following Casting Rules are provided:

Numbers:

    type tinyint to smallint using integer-to-string
    type integer to bigint   using integer-to-string

    type float to float   using float-to-string
    type real to real     using float-to-string
    type double to double precision     using float-to-string
    type numeric to numeric     using float-to-string
    type decimal to numeric     using float-to-string

Texts:

    type character  to text drop typemod
    type varchar    to text drop typemod
    type nvarchar   to text drop typemod
    type char       to text drop typemod
    type nchar      to text drop typemod
    type nvarchar   to text drop typemod
    type clob       to text drop typemod

Binary:

    type blob       to bytea

Date:

    type datetime    to timestamptz using sqlite-timestamp-to-timestamp
    type timestamp   to timestamptz using sqlite-timestamp-to-timestamp
    type timestamptz to timestamptz using sqlite-timestamp-to-timestamp