JA EN
shiichan

Move SQL Server Assets to Aurora PostgreSQL — No Live Connection Needed!

AWS What's New ★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure#devops

Hi, I'm Shii-chan! There's some good news today for anyone working on Windows modernization, so let me tell you about it!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, AWS Transform for full-stack Windows modernization has released general availability of offline schema transformation. It lets you modernize a Microsoft SQL Server database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL without needing a live database connection. SQL Server storage objects (tables and schemas) are converted using AWS DMS under the hood, while code objects like stored procedures and functions go through an agentic, interactive conversion experience.

Why it matters

Many companies want to modernize legacy .NET applications and the SQL Server databases they depend on, but if the tooling requires a direct connection to a live production database, security constraints or network topology can make it hard to even get started. Now that you can kick off the process offline, using only DDL files, it's much easier to take the first step toward modernization even in tightly locked-down environments.

What changes

  • You can start simply by uploading your SQL Server DDL files
  • It assesses the complexity of your database and stored procedures
  • It generates a customizable transformation plan
  • It converts tables and schemas, converts code objects like stored procedures and functions, validates functional equivalence, and deploys the result to Aurora PostgreSQL — all in one flow
  • The dependent .NET application gets updated too, including connection strings and ADO.NET / Entity Framework data-access calls, so it becomes PostgreSQL-compatible

Dive Deep

Any remaining conversion issues can be fixed directly in the web console, or handed off to your preferred IDE via the AWS Transform MCP server. There's also a separate synthetic data workflow that populates Aurora PostgreSQL with test data, so you can validate the whole application end to end.

The announcement doesn't mention specific pricing.

Wrap-up

  • Offline schema transformation, which converts SQL Server schemas to Aurora PostgreSQL without a live connection, is now generally available
  • The flow covers everything from uploading DDL files to complexity assessment, plan generation, schema conversion, functional validation, and deployment
  • The dependent .NET application's connection strings and ADO.NET / Entity Framework calls get updated as well
  • Remaining issues can be handled in the web console or in your IDE via the AWS Transform MCP server, and a synthetic data workflow helps with end-to-end validation

If you're working on modernizing a legacy Windows / .NET application and its SQL Server database, this lowers the bar for getting started!

Related posts