Announcing MongoDB Relational Migrator

We’re thrilled to announce a new tool: MongoDB Relational Migrator. Relational Migrator simplifies the process of moving workloads from relational databases to MongoDB.

We’ve heard it from more of our customers than we can count: organizations want to replatform existing applications from relational databases to MongoDB. MongoDB is more intuitive, more flexible, and more scalable than relational databases. Customers tell us that they need to move away from a relational backend in order to build new functionality into existing applications with increased agility, to make new and better use of enterprise data, or to scale existing services to volumes or usage patterns that they were never designed to handle.

While some customers have successfully migrated some of their relational workloads to MongoDB, many have struggled with how to approach this challenge. Requirements vary. Can we decommission the old database, or does it need to stay running? Is this a wholesale replatforming, or are we carving out pieces of functionality to move to MongoDB? Some customers end up using a variety of ETL, CDC, message queue, streaming, pub/sub, or other technology to move data into MongoDB, but others have decided it’s just too difficult.

It’s also important to think carefully about data modeling as part of a migration. Though it’s possible to naively move a relational schema into MongoDB without any changes, that won’t deliver many of MongoDB’s benefits. A better practice is to design a new and better MongoDB schema that’s more denormalized and potentially to take the opportunity to revise the architecture of the application as well.

We want to make this process easier, which is why we’re developing MongoDB Relational Migrator. Relational Migrator streamlines the process of moving to MongoDB from a relational database and is compatible with Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Migrator connects to a relational database to analyze its existing schema, then helps architects design and map to a new MongoDB schema.

When you’re ready, Migrator will perform the data migration from the source RDBMS to MongoDB. Migration can be a one-shot migration if you’re prepared for a hard cutover; soon, we will also support a continuous sync if you need to leave the source system running and continue pushing changes into MongoDB.

We know that moving long-running systems to MongoDB still isn’t as simple as pushing a button, which is why Relational Migrator is designed to be used with assistance from our Field Engineering teams. For example, as part of a consulting engagement with MongoDB, a consulting engineer can help you evaluate which applications are the best candidates for migration, design and implement a new MongoDB backend, and execute the migration. Relational Migrator will significantly lower the effort and risk in transforming and replicating your data, leaving more time to focus on other aspects of application modernization.