Migrating to PostgreSQL

Convincing decision makers to migrate databases to an open source platform when they are already running proprietary software can be challenging. I will walk through a case study of a successful Microsoft (MS) Windows / SQL Server to Ubuntu / PostgreSQL migration that I have been part of as a consultant to the Energy Division (ED) at the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC). The CPUC ED is responsible to securely manage the data produced by their $1B per year investment in energy efficiency and demand side management, and to make those data available to their independent evaluators to the public. ED began running their MS Windows / SQL Server database server in 2009. Today they run a cluster of open source servers running PosgreSQL. I’ll cover the key barriers we faced in migrating from MS SQL Server to PosgreSQL, and how we overcame them.