Hybrid approach for CMS and CDS databases

Question

In near future we are planning to move both CMS and CDS databases from Oracle to SQL server.

As a first step we want to migrate Content Data Store (Broker DB) from Oracle to SQL Server.

CMS database migration will take long time as we have 100+ publications and we will have to use content porter. So we expect some delay there.

In this case our CMS will be using Oracle database but CDS will be using SQL Server database.

Can anyone point us to Pros and Cons of this hybrid approach. Is this supported option, and will it work in long term?

Answer 1

There is no dependency between your CM and CD database other than the version of SDL Tridion, so provided you are using a supported database and client version, you are good to go.

The only differences between using Oracle and MS SQL server I have seen in the past was ordering of characters. I remember once that on a production server we were using Oracle while on the development server MS SQL Server was used. On the production environment (with Oracle) the _ character was not at the top of an alphabetically ordered list, but at the bottom. While on the development environment (with MS SQL Server) the _ character was at the top of an alphabetically ordered list.

These changes could be due to the database setup and configuration, but those might be things you will encounter, other than that, I wouldn't know anything you can expect.

I would personally have no issues with such a setup, provided you have DBAs with enough knowledge to support and maintain the databases (either two different DBAs or one that knows both).