Database migration covers three jobs: changing a schema, moving data between servers, and switching engines, and each has different tools and risks.
Every safe migration runs six phases: assess, design, rehearse, migrate, verify and cut over, and the rehearsal is the phase most teams skip.
Loading method changes speed by up to 42 times: COPY loaded 735,000 rows per second into PostgreSQL 18.1 against 17,500 for autocommit INSERT statements.