Kronos Oracle to SQL Server Migration Part 1
This is part of the post-arc started by this overview of Migrating from Oracle to SQL Server, and deals with experiences with Kronos migrations.
I have been following Kronos’ employee, Javed Iqbal, on a Kronos Migration and thought that I should mention two speed bumps that were encountered at the start of the migration. I use the term speed bumps because they slowed down the process a little without requiring a detour. For those of you in the UK, speed bumps are what you call “zebra crossings”.
The Clustered Speed Bump
The present 4.2 version of SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle (SSMA4O) Extension Pack does not handle migration to a clustered SQL Server instance. This is a bummer because for Enterprise Applications this is a common scenario. The good news is that version 5.0 is expected to be released this summer. The SSMA group has announced that it will be addressing this issue in this release.
Solution: The SSMA group has provided a work around on Microsoft Support for version 4.2.
Javed informed me that he has used this work around before for other customers with no problems – but for this specific migration there is a compounding speed bump, read on:
The Permissions Speed Bump
The compounding speed bump was the customer’s security policy. They were not willing to grant him full permissions to the nodes of the cluster. I am torn on this –I am very happy to see tight security policies being strictly enforced; I am sad for the juggling act that Javed must do.
Solution: the SSMA40 installation was passed over to the customer staff (who have the appropriate permissions) and Javed could proceed onwards.
Bottom line: Migration can be impacted by hardware (clustered instances), software (extension pack) and humanware (security policy).
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Ken Lassesen from Microsoft's SQL Server blog adds another tip to our readers and more are coming!