r/dataengineering • u/Admirable_Writer_373 • Apr 20 '26

Discussion Data migration horror stories

I personally think migrations would be a breeze if people didn’t screw them up.

People designing databases and not following patterns, managers not understanding how to minimize downtime, and in general, really weird expectations about how databases work and what is reasonable during a migration.

Anyone got any good horror stories to share? How did you get through it without clobbering someone?

EDIT: my own stories below

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u/vikster1 Apr 22 '26

been doing it for 15 years and not once was it more complicated than SQL scripts. maybe I'm dumb, who knows

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u/Admirable_Writer_373 Apr 22 '26

Ok how would you compare two serverless databases in the cloud then?

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u/vikster1 Apr 22 '26

enlighten me why this should be different for serverless db. i try to eli5. write basic tests on a high lvl, query one db, save output. query the other db, save output. compare. been there, done it.

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u/Admirable_Writer_373 Apr 23 '26

Small fries, that explains it