I’m currently involved in a project where we use SQLite as the database system. However, we’re planning to switch to MySQL for our production environment due to issues with scalability and preferences from the team. The SQLite database consists of various tables with different data types such as text, integers, and datetime fields, and some of the tables have relationships defined by foreign keys.
I’m seeking the easiest way to migrate all the data and the structure of these tables to MySQL while ensuring that no information is lost in the process. Are there any reliable tools or scripts available that can help automate this migration? Ideally, I’d like to avoid the need for manually recreating tables if that’s possible.
Has anyone experienced this kind of database migration? What methods have worked effectively for you?
DBeaver saved me significant time when I tackled this migration for a client project last year. The universal database tool has a solid migration wizard that handles SQLite to MySQL conversions quite well. You connect both databases within the interface, then use the data transfer feature which automatically maps most data types and handles the schema conversion. The main advantage over manual dumping is that it properly converts SQLite’s flexible typing to MySQL’s strict column definitions without requiring extensive find-replace operations. I did encounter some issues with BOOLEAN fields that SQLite stores as integers - had to manually review those mappings. The foreign key constraints transferred smoothly, though I recommend disabling them during the import and re-enabling afterward to avoid dependency conflicts. For our database with about 30 tables and 500k records, the entire process completed in under three hours including validation checks.
Encountered this migration challenge twice in the past year and learned that MySQL Workbench’s migration wizard is surprisingly effective for this specific conversion. The tool connects directly to your SQLite file and handles most of the heavy lifting automatically, including data type mapping and foreign key relationships. What impressed me most was how it preserved the referential integrity without requiring manual constraint management. The process involves creating a new MySQL schema, running the migration wizard, and letting it analyze your SQLite structure before proposing the conversion plan. You can review and modify the mappings before execution, which proved useful for handling SQLite’s TEXT fields that needed specific VARCHAR lengths in MySQL. One gotcha I discovered was with timestamp fields - SQLite stores these as strings sometimes, so manual verification was necessary. The migration completed successfully for my database containing 25 tables with complex relationships, though I recommend running a data validation script afterward to ensure accuracy.
phpMyAdmin actually has a decent import wizard that can handle sqlite dumps with some tweaking. i did this migration last month and found that converting the .sql file manually was tedious. ended up using a python script with sqlite3 and mysql-connector libraries to read directly from sqlite and insert into mysql - way cleaner than dealing with syntax differences.
tried navicat premium for this exact scenario few months back and it worked pretty well. the data sync feature handles sqlite to mysql migration smoothly, tho you might need to manually adjust some varchar sizes since sqlite is more flexible with text storage than mysql.
I went through this exact migration about two years ago when our application started hitting SQLite’s concurrent access limitations. The approach that saved me countless hours was using a combination of SQLite’s .dump command and some manual cleanup work. First, I exported the SQLite database using the command line: sqlite3 database.db .dump > export.sql. This generates a complete SQL dump with both structure and data. However, the tricky part is that SQLite uses slightly different syntax than MySQL, so you’ll need to do some find-and-replace operations on the exported file. The main issues I encountered were with data types and auto-increment fields. SQLite’s INTEGER PRIMARY KEY becomes AUTO_INCREMENT in MySQL, and some of the date formats needed adjustment. I also had to wrap table and column names in backticks since MySQL is more strict about reserved keywords. For larger databases, I’d recommend splitting the process into structure migration first, then data migration in batches to avoid timeout issues. The whole process took me about a day for a moderately complex database with around 15 tables.