This topic describes how to use OceanBase Migration Service (OMS) to migrate data from a MySQL database to a MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database, which can be a physical data source or a public cloud data source.
Background
You can create a data migration project in the OMS console to seamlessly migrate the existing business data and incremental data from a MySQL database to a MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database through schema migration, full migration, and incremental synchronization.
The MySQL database supports the following modes: primary database only, standby database only, and primary/standby databases. The following table describes the data migration operations supported by each mode.
| Mode | Supported operation |
|---|---|
| Primary database only | Schema migration, full migration, incremental synchronization, full verification, and reverse incremental migration |
| Standby database only | Schema migration, full migration, and full verification |
| Primary/Standby databases | Primary database: incremental synchronization and reverse incremental migration Standby database: schema migration, full migration, and full verification |
Prerequisites
You have enabled binlogs for the self-managed MySQL database. For more information, see Enable binlogs for the MySQL database.
You have created dedicated database users in the source MySQL database and the destination MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database for data migration and granted the corresponding privileges to the users. For more information, see Create a database user.
Limitations
Limitations on the source database
Do not perform DDL operations that modify database or table schemas during schema migration or full data migration. Otherwise, the data migration project may be interrupted.
At present, MySQL 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, and 8.0 are supported. OMS supports only the MySQL InnoDB storage engine, and is unavailable for other engines.
The precheck fails if the primary key is of the FLOAT or DOUBLE data type. We recommend that you do not specify a column of such a data type as the primary key.
If the destination is a database, OMS does not support triggers in the destination database. If triggers exist in the destination database, the data migration may fail.
OMS does not support an index field greater than 767 bytes (or 191 characters) in length for MySQL.
Data source identifiers and user accounts must be globally unique in OMS.
OMS supports the migration of only objects whose database name, table name, and column name are ASCII-encoded and do not contain special characters. The special characters are spaces and . | " ' ` ( ) = ; / & \ \n
A MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database V3.2.0 does not support the
changeandmodify columnoperations at the same time in one statement.OMS does not support CASCADE foreign key migration for source MySQL databases.
The clock of the source database must be synchronized with that of the destination database.
Considerations
The host of the MySQL database must have sufficient outbound bandwidth. Insufficient outbound bandwidth on the host will slow down log parsing and data migration, which may increase the latency of data synchronization.
If the source and destination databases use different collations, the data in the destination database may be inconsistent with that in the source database after data synchronization.
For example, if the collation for the source database is utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci and that for the destination database is utf8mb4_general_ci, two data records 'A' and 'A ' cannot be both written to the destination database, causing data loss.
Data inconsistency will be detected during verification for a table that uses a column of the VARCHAR type as the primary key.
If the clocks between nodes or between the client and the server are out of synchronization, the latency may be inaccurate during incremental synchronization or reverse incremental migration.
For example, if the clock is earlier than the standard time, the latency can be negative. If the clock is later than the standard time, the latency can be positive.
In a project for reverse incremental migration from a MySQL database to a MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database of a version earlier than V3.2.x, if the source table is a multi-partition table with a global unique index and you update the values of the partitioning key of the table, data may be lost during migration.
If incremental parsing is required for the MySQL database, you must specify the ID of the MySQL server (
server_id).When DDL synchronization is disabled, if you change the unique index of the destination, you must restart the Incr-Sync component. Otherwise, the data may be inconsistent.
Check whether the migration precision provided by OMS for fields of data types such as DECIMAL, FLOAT, and DOUBLE is as expected. If the precision of the destination field type is lower than the precision of the source field type, the value with a higher precision may be truncated. This may result in data inconsistency between the source and destination fields.
If you want to aggregate multiple tables:
We recommend that you configure the mappings between the source and destination databases by specifying matching rules.
We recommend that you manually create schemas at the destination. If you use OMS to create schemas, skip failed objects in the schema migration step.
A difference between the source and destination table schemas may result in data consistency. Some known scenarios are described as follows:
When you manually create a table schema at the destination, if the data types of any columns are not supported by OMS, implicit data type conversion may occur at the destination, which causes inconsistent column types between the source and destination.
If the length of a column at the destination is shorter than that at the source, the data of this column may be automatically truncated, which causes data inconsistency between the source and destination.
If you select only Incremental Synchronization when you create a data migration project, OMS requires that the local incremental logs in the source database be retained for more than 48 hours.
If you select Full Data Migration and Incremental Synchronization when you create a data migration project, OMS requires that the local incremental logs in the source database be retained for at least 7 days. Otherwise, the data migration project will fail or the data in the source and destination databases will be inconsistent because OMS cannot obtain incremental logs.
Data type mappings
| MySQL database | MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database |
|---|---|
| INTEGER | INTEGER |
| TINYINT | TINYINT |
| MEDIUMINT | MEDIUMINT |
| BIGINT | BIGINT |
| SMALLINT | SMALLINT |
| DECIMAL | DECIMAL |
| NUMERIC | NUMERIC |
| FLOAT | FLOAT |
| REAL | REAL |
| DOUBLE PRECISION | DOUBLE PRECISION |
| BIT | BIT |
| CHAR | CHAR |
| VARCHAR | VARCHAR |
| BINARY | BINARY |
| VARBINARY | VARBINARY |
| BLOB | BLOB |
| TEXT | TEXT |
| ENUM | ENUM Notice: This data type is supported for MySQL tenants of OceanBase Database V2.2.0 and later. |
| SET | SET Notice: This data type is supported for MySQL tenants of OceanBase Database V2.2.0 and later. |
| JSON | JSON Notice: This data type is supported for MySQL tenants of OceanBase Database V3.2.2 and later. |
| DATE | DATE |
| DATETIME | DATETIME |
| TIMESTAMP | TIMESTAMP |
| TIME | TIME |
| YEAR | YEAR |
Procedure
Create a data migration project.

Log on to the OMS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, click Data Migration.
On the Data Migration page, click Create Migration Project in the upper-right corner.
On the Select Source and Destination page, configure the parameters.

Parameter Description Migration Project Name We recommend that you set it to a combination of digits and letters. It must not contain any spaces and cannot exceed 64 characters in length.
Notice
The project name must be a unique identifier in the OMS system.Tag (Optional) Click the field and select a target tag from the drop-down list. You can also click Manage Tags to create, modify, and delete tags. For more information, see Use tags to manage data migration projects. Source If you have created a MySQL data source, select it from the drop-down list. If not, click New Data Source in the drop-down list and create one in the dialog box that appears on the right. For more information about the parameters, see Create a MySQL data source.
Note- If you select Allow OMS to automatically write heartbeat data into this instance during incremental synchronization. This resolves the problem of high latency when no business data is written in the source database. when you add a MySQL data source, OMS will create and update the
drc.heartbeattable in the corresponding MySQL database. In that case, the MySQL database user must have the privileges to create and write the table. For more information, see Create and update a heartbeat table. - You can select a MySQL data source in primary database only mode or primary/standby databases mode. This topic describes how to create a data migration project with a MySQL data source in primary/standby databases mode.
Destination If you have created a data source for the MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database, which can be a physical data source or a public cloud data source, select it from the drop-down list. If not, click New Data Source in the drop-down list and create one in the dialog box that appears on the right. For more information about parameters, see Create a physical OceanBase data source or Create a public cloud OceanBase data source. Scenario Type Valid values: Tables with Unique Key and All Tables. - If a table has primary key constraints or non-null unique key constraints, this table is a table with a unique key.
- If you select All Tables, tables that have primary key constraints, and unique and non-unique keys, except for temporary tables, are included.
- If you select Allow OMS to automatically write heartbeat data into this instance during incremental synchronization. This resolves the problem of high latency when no business data is written in the source database. when you add a MySQL data source, OMS will create and update the
Click Next.
If you selected Tables with Unique Key for Scenario, click OK in the dialog box that appears.

On the Select Migration Type page, configure the parameters.

Options for Migration Type are Schema Migration, Full Data Migration, Incremental Synchronization, Full Verification, and Reverse Increment.
Migration type Description Schema migration When a schema migration task starts, OMS migrates the definitions of data objects, such as tables, indexes, constraints, comments, and views, from the source database to the destination database. Temporary tables are automatically filtered out. In a project that migrates schemas from a MySQL database to a MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database, the database that does not exist in the destination can be automatically created. Full migration When a full migration task starts, OMS migrates the existing data from tables in the source database to the corresponding tables in the destination database. If you select Full Data Migration, we recommend that you use the ANALYZEstatement to collect the statistics of the MySQL database before data migration.Incremental synchronization When an incremental synchronization task starts, OMS synchronizes changed data in the source database to the corresponding tables in the destination database. Data changes are data addition, modification, and deletion.
Options for Incremental Synchronization are DML Synchronization and DDL Synchronization. You can select the options as needed. For more information about DDL synchronization, see Synchronize DDL operations from a MySQL database to a MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database. Incremental Synchronization has the following limitations:- If you select Incremental Synchronization, you need to enable binlogs for the source MySQL database, and set
binlog_row_imagetofullandbinlog_formattorow. - If you select Incremental Synchronization, the binlogs of the MySQL database must be retained for at least 24 hours. Otherwise, the migration project may be interrupted and cannot be resumed because of the absence of binlogs.
- If you select DDL Synchronization, when you perform a DDL operation that cannot be synchronized by OMS in the source database, data migration may be interrupted.
- If the DDL operation creates a new column, we recommend that you set the attribute of the column to NULL. Otherwise, data migration may be interrupted.
Full verification After the full data migration and incremental data synchronization are completed, OMS automatically initiates a full data verification task to verify the data tables in the source and destination databases. - If you select Full Verification, we recommend that you collect the statistics of the MySQL database and the MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database before full verification. For more information about how to collect statistics of a MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database, see Manually collect statistics.
- If you have selected Incremental Synchronization but did not select all DML statements in the DML Synchronization section, OMS does not support full verification.
- OMS supports full data verification only for tables with a primary key or a non-null unique key.
Reverse incremental migration When a reverse incremental migration task starts, OMS migrates the data changed in the destination database after the business switchover back to the source database in real time. You cannot select Reverse Increment in the following cases: - Multi-table aggregation is enabled.
- Multiple source schemas map to the same destination schema.
- If you select Incremental Synchronization, you need to enable binlogs for the source MySQL database, and set
(Optional) Click Next.
If you have selected Reverse Increment but no related parameters are configured for the data source of the destination MySQL tenant of OceanBase Database, the More About Data Sources dialog box appears, prompting you to configure related parameters. For more information about parameters, see Create a physical OceanBase data source or Create a public cloud OceanBase data source.
After you configure the parameters, click Test Connection. After the test succeeds, click OK.
Click Next. On the Select Migration Objects page, select the migration objects and migration scope.
You can select Specify Objects or Match Rules to specify the migration objects.
Select Specify Objects. Then select the objects to be migrated on the left and click > to add them to the list on the right. You can select tables and views of one or more databases as the migration objects.
Notice
The names of tables to be migrated, as well as the names of columns in the tables, must not contain Chinese characters.
Do not select a table named in the format of *_ghc.
If the database or table name contains a double dollar sign ($$), you cannot create the migration project.
After you select migration objects by using the Specify Objects option, the DDL operations take effect only for selected objects, and table creation is not supported.
OMS automatically filters out unsupported tables.
OMS also allows you to import objects from text, rename objects, set row filters, view column information, and remove a single object or all objects to be migrated.

Operation Description Import objects - In the list on the right of the Specify Migration Scope section, click Import Objects in the upper-right corner.
- In the dialog box that appears, click OK.
Notice
This operation will overwrite previous selections. Proceed with caution. - In the Import Objects dialog box, import the objects to be migrated.
You can import CSV files to rename databases/tables and set row filtering conditions. For more information, see Download and import the settings of migration objects. - Click Validate.
- After the validation succeeds, click OK.
Rename objects OMS allows you to rename the migration objects. For more information, see Rename a migration or synchronization object. Configure settings OMS allows you to use the WHEREclause to filter rows. For more information, see Use SQL conditions to filter data.
You can also view column information of the migration object in the View Column section.Remove one or all objects During data mapping, OMS allows you to remove one or more selected objects to be migrated or synchronized to the destination. - To remove a single migration object:
In the list on the right of the Specify Migration Scope section, move the pointer over the target object, and click Remove. - To remove all migration objects:
In the list on the right of the Specify Migration Scope section, click Remove All in the upper-right corner. In the dialog box that appears, click OK.
Select Match Rules. For more information, see Configure matching rules for migration objects.
Notice
Set Object Exclusion Rule to
{database_name}.*_ghc.
Click Next.
If you select All Tables for Scenario Type, click Next in the dialog box that appears.
On the Migration Options page, configure the parameters.
Full migration
The following parameters are displayed only if you have selected Full Data Migration on the Select Migration Type page.

Parameter Description Full Migration Resource Configuration You can select Small, Medium, or Large to use the corresponding default values of Read Concurrency, Write Concurrency, and Memory. You can also customize the resource configurations for full migration. Through resource configuration for the Full-Import component, you can limit the resource consumption of a project in the full migration phase. Notice
In the case of custom configurations, the minimum value is 1 and only integers are supported.
Processing Strategy When Destination Table Has Records Valid values: Ignore and Stop Migration. - If you select Ignore, when the data to be written conflicts with the existing data of a destination table, OMS logs the conflicting data while retaining the existing data.
Notice
If you select Ignore, data is pulled in IN mode for full verification. In this case, the scenario where the destination table contains more data than the source table cannot be verified, and the verification efficiency will be decreased.
- If you select Stop Migration and a destination table contains records, an error is returned during full migration, indicating that the migration is not allowed. In this case, you must clear the data in the destination table before you can continue with the migration.
Notice
After an error is returned, if you click Resume in the dialog box, OMS ignores this error and continues to migrate data. Proceed with caution.
Whether to Allow Post-indexing Specifies whether to create indexes after the full migration is completed. Post-indexing can shorten the time required for full migration. For more information about the considerations on post-indexing, see the description below. Notice
This feature is supported only if you have selected both Schema Migration and Full Data Migration on the Select Migration Type page.
- Only non-unique key indexes can be created after the migration is completed.
- OceanBase Database V1.x does not support the post-indexing feature.
If post-indexing is allowed, we recommend that you adjust the parameters based on the hardware conditions of your OceanBase database and the current business traffic.
If you use OceanBase Database V4.x, adjust the following parameters of the sys tenant and business tenants by using a CLI client.
Adjust the parameters of the sys tenant
// parallel_servers_target specifies the queuing conditions for parallel queries on each server. // To maximize performance, we recommend that you set this parameter to a value greater than, for example, 1.5 times, the number of physical CPU cores. In addition, make sure that the value does not exceed 64, to prevent database kernels from contending for locks. set global parallel_servers_target = 64;Adjust the parameters of a business tenant
// Specify the limit on the file memory buffer size. alter system set _temporary_file_io_area_size = '10' tenant = 'xxx'; // Disable throttling in V4.x. alter system set sys_bkgd_net_percentage = 100;
If you use OceanBase Database V2.x or V3.x, adjust the following parameters of the sys tenant by using a CLI client.
// parallel_servers_target specifies the queuing conditions for parallel queries on each server. // To maximize performance, we recommend that you set this parameter to a value greater than, for example, 1.5 times, the number of physical CPU cores. In addition, make sure that the value does not exceed 64, to prevent database kernels from contending for locks. set global parallel_servers_target = 64; // data_copy_concurrency specifies the maximum number of concurrent data migration and replication tasks allowed in the system. alter system set data_copy_concurrency = 200;
- If you select Ignore, when the data to be written conflicts with the existing data of a destination table, OMS logs the conflicting data while retaining the existing data.
Incremental synchronization
The following parameters are displayed only if you have selected Incremental Synchronization on the Select Migration Type page.

Parameter Description Incremental Log Pull Resource Configuration You can select Small, Medium, or Large to use the corresponding default value of Memory. You can also customize the resource configurations for incremental log pull. Through resource configuration for the Store component, you can limit the resource consumption of a project in log pull in the incremental synchronization phase. Notice
In the case of custom configurations, the minimum value is 1 and only integers are supported.
Incremental Data Write Resource Configuration You can select Small, Medium, or Large to use the corresponding default values of Write Concurrency and Memory. You can also customize the resource configurations for incremental data write. Through resource configuration for the Incr-Sync component, you can limit the resource consumption of a project in data writes in the incremental synchronization phase. Notice
In the case of custom configurations, the minimum value is 1 and only integers are supported.
Incremental Record Retention Time The duration that incremental parsed files are cached in OMS. A longer retention period results in more disk space occupied by the Store component. Incremental Synchronization Start Timestamp - If you have set the migration type to Full Data Migration, this parameter is not displayed.
- If you have selected Incremental Synchronization but not Full Data Migration, specify a point in time after which the data is to be synchronized. The default value is the current system time. For more information, see Set an incremental synchronization timestamp.
Reverse incremental migration
The following parameters are displayed only if you have selected Reverse Increment on the Select Migration Type page. The parameters for reverse incremental migration are consistent with those for incremental synchronization. You can select Reuse Incremental Synchronization Configuration in the upper-right corner.

Full verification
The following parameters are displayed only if you have selected Full Verification on the Select Migration Type page.

Parameter Description Full Verification Resource Configuration You can select Small, Medium, or Large to use the corresponding default values of Read Concurrency and Memory. You can also customize the resource configurations for full verification. Through resource configuration for the Full-Verification component, you can limit the resource consumption of a project in the full verification phase. Notice
In the case of custom configurations, the minimum value is 1 and only integers are supported.
If the parameter settings on the page cannot meet your requirements, you can click Parameter Configuration in the lower part of the page to configure more specific settings. You can also reference an existing project or component template.

Click Precheck to start a precheck on the data migration project.
During the precheck, OMS checks the read and write privileges of the database users and the network connections of the databases. The data migration project can be started only after it passes all check items. If an error is returned during the precheck:
You can identify and troubleshoot the problem and then perform the precheck again.
You can also click Skip in the Actions column of a failed precheck item. In the dialog box that appears, you can view the prompt for the consequences of the operation and click OK.
Click Start Project. If you do not need to start the project now, click Save to go to the details page of the data migration project. You can start the project later as needed.
OMS allows you to modify the migration objects when the data migration project is running. For more information, see View and modify migration objects. After a data migration project is started, the migration subtasks will be executed based on the selected migration types. For more information, see the "View migration details" section in the View details of a data migration project topic.