I need to move my MySQL database to a different database system that follows SQL2003 standards. Right now I’m working with MonetDB but I want a solution that works with any SQL2003 compatible database.
Is there a way to use mysqldump with special options or maybe another tool that can export my MySQL data as standard SQL2003 code? I want something that will create the tables and insert all the data in a format that any SQL2003 compliant database can understand.
The main issue is that mysqldump creates MySQL-specific SQL that doesn’t always work with other database systems. I need the output to be more generic and follow the SQL2003 standard strictly so I can import it anywhere.
I faced this exact challenge when migrating from MySQL to DB2 last year. The approach that worked best for me was combining mysqldump with post-processing scripts. First, use mysqldump with --single-transaction and --routines=false to get cleaner output, then run the dump through sed or awk scripts to replace MySQL-specific constructs. For example, converting backticks to double quotes for identifiers, replacing AUTO_INCREMENT with standard IDENTITY columns, and handling ENGINE specifications. The tricky part is dealing with MySQL’s loose handling of quotes and date formats. I wrote a Python script that parsed the dump file and standardized these elements according to SQL2003 specs. While not perfect, this method gave me about 90% compatibility across different target databases. The remaining issues were mostly related to vendor-specific optimizations that needed manual adjustment. If you have complex stored procedures or triggers, you’ll definitely need to rewrite those manually since SQL2003 doesn’t standardize procedural syntax well enough for automated conversion.
From my experience migrating several MySQL databases to PostgreSQL and Oracle, mysqldump alone won’t give you clean SQL2003 output. The --compatible=ansi flag helps somewhat but still leaves MySQL-specific syntax that breaks on other systems. I’ve had good results using SQLines SQL Converter for this exact scenario. It handles the conversion from MySQL dialect to standard SQL pretty well, though you’ll still need to review the output manually. Another approach that worked for me was using DBeaver’s export functionality - it has options to generate more portable SQL scripts. One thing to watch out for is data type mapping. MySQL’s specific types like TINYINT or TEXT variations don’t translate cleanly to SQL2003 standard types. You’ll likely need to do some manual cleanup regardless of which tool you choose. Also test with a small subset of your data first since every database interprets the standard slightly differently despite being SQL2003 compliant.
i think using tools like pentaho data integration or talend could really help. they can connect to mysql and export to many db formats, incl. sql2003. mysqldump with --compatible=ansi does help but still not ideal for full cross-platform migration.