Hey Chris,
thanks for your input, you made some very valid points. Your idea to improve the migration process should be entere into our bug system (as feature request) at
http://bugs.mysql.com.
For the migration frequency argument: what I mean is that migration is usually a complex process, especially if you come from a different server architecture (say Oracle to MySQL), since you have to manually migrate stored programs which can be a *very* difficult task or need data type mappings, adjust your source server to not contain anything that can't be migrated etc.
All that together make a migration something that you don't do on a daily basis (for the same move). Migration is a move from one house to the other. You do it once and that should be it. At least this is how migration is considered and implmented in MySQL Workbench. Of course you are right that requirements change and so should software. Hence the best way to get this rolling is to add specific feature requests.
I still think that replication is the way to go for you (as long as you stay with the same server architecture, e.g. MySQL -> MySQL). You don't need a complex set up. You can define one server as master that pushes changed records to a slave and that's it.
Mike
Mike Lischke, MySQL Developer Tools
Oracle Corporation
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