Convert SQL dump to PostgreSQL

Upload a .sql file and get back a PostgreSQL SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.

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CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)

How your data is typed in PostgreSQL

Generated from the converter's own PostgreSQL type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.

Your dataPostgreSQL type
Whole numberBIGINT
Decimal (money)NUMERIC(10,2)
Floating pointDOUBLE PRECISION
True / falseBOOLEAN
DateDATE
Date and timeTIMESTAMP
Short textTEXT
Long textTEXT
Binary dataBYTEA

Working from a .sql file

A .sql file is only text containing statements, so what you get out depends entirely on which statements are in it. Schema and data both have to be present for the result to be a database rather than an empty shell.

  • Four things are used: CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE ... PRIMARY KEY, INSERT and COPY. Views, triggers, stored procedures, indexes and GRANT statements are read past rather than converted.
  • A file with INSERTs but no CREATE TABLE still produces its rows, with a warning that the columns are unnamed - the file never said what they were called.
  • A file with neither comes back with "No CREATE TABLE or INSERT statements were found", which usually means the schema lives in a second file.
  • psql meta-commands - the lines beginning with a backslash, like \connect - are client directives rather than SQL, and are skipped before parsing.

What the PostgreSQL script contains

The conversion produces one dump.sql with a README beside it, zipped. It is a script you can open, grep and edit before you run it rather than an archive a tool has to unpack, and it is deliberately sparing in what it declares.

  • Every string column is declared TEXT, whatever length the source declared for it. PostgreSQL stores a short value in a TEXT column exactly as cheaply as in a VARCHAR, and an unbounded column cannot reject a row on load for being a few characters too long.
  • Identifiers are all double-quoted, and even so a name on PostgreSQL's reserved list is given a trailing underscore: a column called user arrives as user_, order as order_, limit as limit_.
  • A decimal column whose source declared no scale is given six decimal places rather than none, keeping whatever precision it did declare: NUMERIC(10,6) from a source that said 10, and NUMERIC(18,6) from one that declared neither. A scale of zero would have the server round 19.99 to 20 as it loaded.

Reading SQL dump

  • Parsed with a real SQL parser, not regular expressions, so a value containing a closing parenthesis or a semicolon cannot split a row in half.
  • CREATE TABLE types, primary keys, NOT NULL and AUTO_INCREMENT are all read from the dump.
  • The source dialect is detected from the dump itself — MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server dumps all parse.

Writing PostgreSQL

  • Backslashes are left alone, because PostgreSQL treats them as ordinary characters — doubling them would corrupt every Windows path.
  • Auto-increment columns become GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY.
  • Binary data is written as bytea, and identifiers respect the 63-character limit.

What you get

A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.

Load this dump into PostgreSQL:

  psql -U USER -d DATABASE -f dump.sql

Create the database first if it does not exist:

  createdb -U USER DATABASE

Questions

Is converting SQL dump to PostgreSQL free?
Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
Will my SQL dump data keep its types in PostgreSQL?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real PostgreSQL types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
Do you store my file?
No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.

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