Date: 2026-05-21
Time: 16:15–16:40
Room: Labatt
Level: Intermediate
Migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL seems straightforward on paper - after all, they’re both relational databases, right? This journey reveals unexpected challenges that go far beyond simple syntax changes. This talk shares hard-won lessons from product migrations at Lufthansa Group Business Services, covering some easy wins as well as painful gotchas that can impact performance, correctness, and your sanity.
We’ll explore technical nuances that cause real-world problems: Differences in NULL handling and why IS DISTINCT FROM is a distinctly bad idea for your query performance. Numeric types, rounding behaviors, and how to enforce the desired precision. How PostgreSQL’s MVCC architecture fundamentally changes your update strategy - when updating 80 million records in a single query brings your system to its knees.
You’ll leave with practical strategies, performance insights, and a realistic understanding of what it takes to successfully migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL.