Migrations to SQL Server: Why, best practice and lessons learned from Customer engagements

If you are thinking about migrations or wondering why it might be relevant this is a 'must see' session. Many companies are looking to reduce the number of RDBMS in their organisation as part of this strategy migrating databases and application to SQL Server is a necessary step to achieving a more streamlined and cost effective data management strategy. No migration is straightforward: challenges exist in migrating the schema, the data and the programmatic elements. Many are simple and much can be achieved quickly, however, what are the problems, how do you prepare for them, how do you identify them and what should you do to achieve a successful migration from Oracle or Sybase? This session will talk about migration concepts but will focus on best practice and lessons learned from actual engagements with clients. In September 2008 Microsoft acquired DATAllegro, a provider of large-volume, high-performance data warehouse appliances. This acquisition will enable SQL Server, via project Madison, to scale all the way up to the largest-scale and most complex data warehouse implementations. During this session we will provide a brief insight into what customers can expect from this technology and how migrations to SQL is realistic for all sizes of database.