AWS Announces General Availability of Babelfish for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL

By: Amazon Web Services, Inc. via Business Wire

October 28, 2021 at 16:16 PM EDT

New Amazon Aurora capability gives customers the ability to run applications written for Microsoft SQL Server directly on Amazon Aurora with little to no code changes

New open-source Babelfish for PostgreSQL makes it easier for more organizations to run Microsoft SQL Server on PostgreSQL under the permissive Apache 2.0 and PostgreSQL licenses

Factset, Tyler Technologies, and Q2 among customers using Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL

Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced the general availability of Babelfish for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, a new capability that allows customers to run applications written for Microsoft SQL Server directly on Amazon Aurora with little to no code changes. Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL enables Amazon Aurora to understand commands from applications written for Microsoft SQL Server, making it easier for customers to migrate to Amazon Aurora. With Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL, customers simply migrate their data and configure their application to point to Amazon Aurora, reducing costs and simplifying operations by removing the dependency on Microsoft SQL Server. Also announced today, open-source Babelfish for PostgreSQL makes the same Microsoft SQL Server language capability in Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL available to any organization interested in running PostgreSQL, and the source code for Babelfish for PostgreSQL is available on GitHub under the permissive Apache 2.0 and PostgreSQL licenses for anyone who wants to extend it or use it for any purpose under the terms of the license. To get started with Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL, visit aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/babelfish.

Constrained by commercial-grade database options that don’t offer the flexibility and database freedom of modern offerings, customers have long been unhappy with old-guard database providers. Commercial-grade databases offer high performance but are expensive, proprietary, and have high lock-in and punitive licensing terms that arbitrarily change. Many customers have moved to open-source database engines like PostgreSQL and MySQL because they want the performance of commercial-grade databases with the pricing and flexibility open-source engines provide. However, configuring open-source database engines to achieve high performance is time consuming and labor intensive. That’s why today more than 100,000 customers choose to run their database workloads on Amazon Aurora, a fully managed MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible database that delivers the performance and availability of the highest-grade commercial databases at one tenth the cost. Today, customers use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to migrate databases to the cloud and take advantage of high-performance open-source engines. However, once the initial database migration is complete, customers still need to migrate their application logic to run on PostgreSQL. Migrating application logic requires manual coding, is time consuming, and is often tied to proprietary database commands. Customers interested in adopting PostgreSQL and enjoying the benefits of running an open-source database engine on AWS want an easier way to migrate their Microsoft SQL Server applications to Amazon Aurora.

Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL is a new capability that makes it possible to run Microsoft SQL Server applications directly on Amazon Aurora with little to no code changes. Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL provides a new capability for Amazon Aurora that enables Amazon Aurora to understand commands from applications written for Microsoft SQL Server. With Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now understands T-SQL, Microsoft SQL Server’s proprietary SQL dialect, and supports the same SQL syntax as Microsoft SQL Server, so customers no longer need to rewrite their applications’ database requests. Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL also understands TDS, Microsoft SQL Server’s network protocol, so customers can continue to use the existing Microsoft SQL Server database drivers that their applications rely on. As a result, customers can more easily move applications running on Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon Aurora, leading to faster, lower-risk, and more cost-effective database migrations. After customers migrate their data using AWS DMS, they simply update their application configuration to point to Amazon Aurora and start testing their application running on Amazon Aurora instead of Microsoft SQL Server. Once customers test their application, they can put it in production, no longer need Microsoft SQL Server, and can stop paying for the expensive, constrained licenses. Because Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL supports both Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL, customers can migrate at their own speed and run their legacy Microsoft SQL Server code side by side with new functionality they build using PostgreSQL application programming interfaces (APIs).

“More and more customers have told us they want a fast, inexpensive, and low-risk way to break free from old-guard database vendors and their punitive licensing terms, high costs, and lack of innovation,” said Raju Gulabani, VP of Databases and Analytics at AWS. “Now, with Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL, anyone can quickly, easily, and cost effectively migrate their applications to Amazon Aurora, giving customers the best of both worlds—the performance and availability of the highest-grade commercial databases at a cost more commonly associated with open source.”

In addition to the Amazon Aurora offering, the source code for Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL is now available on GitHub under the permissive Apache 2.0 and PostgreSQL licenses for anyone to view. Organizations can use it for any purpose including distributing it, modifying it, and distributing modified versions of it under the terms of the licenses. In addition to the source code being available on GitHub, all Babelfish for PostgreSQL development is done openly on GitHub, so organizations can see what new features are being developed.

Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL is generally available today to customers running Amazon Aurora in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Milan), Europe (Paris), Europe (Stockholm), Middle East (Bahrain), and South America (São Paulo) with availability in additional AWS Regions coming soon.

FactSet creates flexible, open data and software solutions for tens of thousands of investment professionals around the world. “FactSet is excited about the launch of Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL,” said Demetry Zilberg, CTO at FactSet. “We are optimistic that Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL will materially accelerate the pace of our migration from commercial relational database platforms to PostgresSQL on Amazon Aurora, which is a key part of our Digital Foundation program for product-driven initiatives. With Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL, our teams can focus on revenue-generating product development rather than re-architecture.”

Presidio is a leading information technology (IT) services and solutions provider that helps customers connect IT of today to IT of tomorrow. “Presidio has helped numerous customers migrate their database operations to AWS using AWS DMS, Amazon Relational Database Service, and other AWS data offerings. However, giving clients the flexibility and freedom to choose their relational data store has always required deep, costly application refactoring,” said Sanjeev Pant, VP of Cloud Transformation at Presidio. “With Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL, we now have options to cut out expensive licensing and provide expansive choice of backend options to suit our clients’ needs on their journey to data and app modernization with a data-driven enterprise in mind. The reduction of time, cost, and risk to our projects, and those of our clients, is game changing.”

Tyler is the largest and most established provider of integrated software and technology services focused on the public sector. “We’ve been using Amazon Aurora to support new application development because of its high performance and scalability, and we are eager to migrate our large portfolio of existing applications to Amazon Aurora as well,” said Brian McGrath, Senior Vice President of Operations at Tyler Technologies. “Our development teams used Babelfish in preview to move one of our mission-critical applications to Amazon Aurora, and the migration required minimal changes in our SQL Server application code. We pointed the applications at Aurora, and it just worked. We are excited for the general availability launch of Babelfish, which will enable us to migrate the rest of our application portfolio to Aurora in a fraction of the time it might otherwise have taken.”

Q2 is a leading provider of secure, cloud-based digital solutions that transform how financial services providers engage with users. “We have tested an end-user application with minimal database changes for Babelfish, and we are pleased with the performance so far,” said Jordan Hager, Vice President of Hosting Architecture at Q2. “We estimate Babelfish’s capabilities will speed up our database migration to Amazon Aurora from SQL Server by 80% or more. The faster we move off SQL Server to Aurora, the sooner we dramatically lower our database licensing costs, increase developer productivity, and improve database performance. Needless to say, we are thrilled with the general availability launch of Babelfish.”

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