Old Fish Interview (VI) | Chinese Database Migration Case Studies and Ecosystem Building Insights

Introduction

Recently, the well-known self-media "Lao Yu's Notebook" conducted an in-depth interview with Cui Zhiwei, General Manager of the GBase 8s Product Department at General Data Technology Co., Ltd. They discussed GBase 8s's migration practices, ecosystem building, and core competitiveness, using two typical migration cases at Guizhou Power Grid and Fudan University to analyze the migration difficulties and strategies in different scenarios. They also shared the phased path of GBase 8s's ecosystem development and explained its core competitive advantages in shared-storage cluster maturity and front-end business continuity assurance.

Old Fish: You just mentioned some of your thoughts on migration. Can you go into a specific case, for example, the migration at Guizhou Power Grid or Fudan University, and discuss the most complex aspects of the migration process and how you handled them?

GBase 8s's Cui Zhiwei: The difficulties differed between the two cases. For Guizhou Power Grid, the biggest challenge was Oracle compatibility. There were nearly 300,000 lines of PL/SQL code, and the migrated database server had to be able to handle it – that was the basic prerequisite. The next challenge was performance. After migration, we needed to verify the accuracy of Oracle stored procedure execution on GBase 8s and get the customer's approval, while also comparing execution efficiency. If performance was lower, we had to specifically optimize the stored procedures. That was the most difficult part of the entire migration. In fact, this type of migration tests not the migration tool, but the server's capability to take over.

The Fudan University case involved the migration of its campus card system, which is critical to the university's daily operations. We completed the migration and had it running for several months early on, but faced a crucial stress test on September 1st, the start of the school year. The client required stable operation on that day; any failure would render the prior adaptation work useless, and if a failure occurred, a quick rollback to the original system was essential. To address this, we deployed RTSync's reverse synchronization. In the end, the database's CPU and memory ran smoothly on opening day, and we passed the stress test. In reality, clients like banks and telecom operators are more cautious and conduct multiple stress tests before going live, which differs from the sudden pressure scenario of a university.

Old Fish: We all know that databases rely heavily on ecosystems. Where has GBase 8s put the most effort in ecosystem development?

GBase 8s's Cui Zhiwei: GBase 8s's ecosystem development has been phased. In the early stages, when compatibility was limited, we only needed to handle narrow-scope projects without much ecosystem considerations. As product compatibility improved, the ecosystem boundary began to expand. The first area of focus was the database's peripheral ecosystem, such as supporting tools like migration tools and synchronization tools. Next, we concentrated on completing various database drivers. Beyond the commonly used JDBC, we also support ODBC, OCI, OCCI, as well as drivers for Python, Go, and other languages. Currently, the greatest effort is being spent on adapting to various development frameworks. Since GBase 8s is a closed-source product, we maintain the ecosystem entirely in-house. I have personally worked with about 30 different frameworks, each with multiple versions, making adaptation extremely challenging. But this is also a good sign – it means GBase 8s is seeing more and more project opportunities and greater room for market expansion.

Old Fish: The database market in China is highly competitive, with several other companies also working in the RAC space. So what is GBase 8s's greatest core competitiveness?

GBase 8s's Cui Zhiwei: GBase 8s's core competitiveness is mainly reflected in two aspects. First, our shared-storage cluster is the most mature and stable shared storage available. This is evidenced by real-world results in terms of the uptime of live cases and the data volumes managed, having passed long-term market validation. Second, we are more focused on front-end business continuity. We do everything we can to ensure stable operations, aiming to provide users and developers with a better experience. Even if a minor issue occurs, users can recover business with a simple operation – that is a capability we have prioritized building.

Old Fish: Let me summarize: GBase 8s's RAC is not just theory; it has a large number of real-world deployment cases – a rarity. And business continuity is indeed the key to a database.

GBase 8s's Cui Zhiwei: Exactly. That is precisely the core advantage of GBase 8s.