It is difficult to compare MS SQL and MySQL. Both products can be used to build complex, stable and efficient databases. Despite of this fact, many organizations have migrated their MS SQL databases to MySQL server in order to take advantages of MySQL:

Open Source - free access to the source code allows every professional to find out how the product is working or even fix some problems without involving the developer. It enables unlimited tuning and improvement of MySQL server.

Cross-Platforming - you can develop MySQL database on a Windows laptop and then deploy on Windows or Linux server. It gives you incredible flexibility when choosing server platform.

Migration Strategies

There are multiple standard solutions to migrate MS SQL data to MySQL server. First, you can use Microsoft Data Transformation Services (DTS) to export data from MS SQL server to any ODBC data source including MySQL. Another way is to export the data from MS SQL into text format and then import it directly to MySQL server. However both of these approaches require some manual data transformation because there are some differences between data types in MS SQL and MySQL. For example: a MySQL VARCHAR can hold up to 255 characters, whereas a SQL Server VARCHAR can hold up to 4000 characters. So if you do not feel comfortable with command prompt tools and wish to avoid tedious post-processing work, you can try out some of MS SQL to MySQL converters available on the market.

MSSQL-to-MySQL by Intelligent Converters

Although it is very easy to use, MSSQL-to-MySQL converter provides enough capabilities to migrate very large and complex MS SQL databases. The results of migration process are very accurate because the converter does all necessary data transformation, supports all MS SQL types and attributes, converts all indexes (including foreign keys), handles multibyte character sets and much more. If you need more control over the conversion or just don't have direct access to the destination MySQL server MSSQL-to-MySQL can export data into MySQL dump file. Click here to learn more about MSSQL-to-MySQL converter.