Binckbank, a leading brokerage firm, is migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL to reduce costs and improve performance. Three proof of concepts were conducted to assess application, infrastructure, and performance aspects of the migration, with PostgreSQL showing significant advantages over Oracle. The migration of the Europort database revealed that while database migration is straightforward, application migration poses challenges that require external support.

1. 1
Frans Verduyn Lunel – Database Architect
The BinckBank Story
Postgres Vision 2018

2. 1. BinckBank
2. The application architecture
3. Why we want to migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL
4. The start
5. The three POC’s
– Application POC
– Infrastructure POC
– Performance POC
6. The migration of Europort
7. Conclusion
2 Postgres Vision 2018
Agenda

3. 3 Postgres Vision 2018
INTRODUCTION TO BINCK
Geographic footprint
• First Binck Country
• Leading Brokerage position
• 478 K accounts
• 5,6 mio transactions
• € 18,4 bln Assets under
Administration
• € 1,3 bln Assets under
Management
• Customer satisfaction 7.0
§ Lauched Belgium in 2006
§ Leading Brokerage position
§ 67 K accounts
§ 0,7 mio transactions
§ € 2,9 bln Assets under
Administration
§ € 2,1 mln Assets under
Management (started in
Investing segment in Dec
’16)
§ Customer satisfaction 8.3
§ Lauched France in 2008
§ 64 K accounts
§ 0,9 mio transactions
§ € 0,8 bln Assets under
Administration
§ Customer satisfaction 7.6
§ Lauched Italy in 2012
§ 6 K accounts
§ 0,5 mio transactions
§ € 0,5 bln Assets under
Administration
§ Customer satisfaction 7.5
§ Most active customers
§ Lauched Spain in 2006
§ Focus on Dutch-speaking
investors
Country manager
Jeroen Sonsma
Country manager
Stijn Ceelen
Country manager
Matthias Baccino
Country manager
Vincenzo Tedeschi
Country manager
Kaspar Huijsman

4. BUSINES
S
CORPORAT
E
4 Postgres Vision 20184
CORPORATE STORY
Binck combines the assets of being both a bank & fintech company
HOW IT STARTED
Our mission was to provide retail investors with the same tools as
professionals, our new mission is:
To be the guide in peoples journey towards realizing
their dreams and ambitions.
Continuously navigating them to financial products and services that will
empower them in order to realize their goal for financial independence
Our logo represents the inside of the wheel of a ship and is a reference
to many actions : to maneuver and then lead to autonomy.

5. 5 Postgres Vision 2018
IT Application Architecture
Core applications technology
§ In house development
§ Topline frontend application
§ Built with Delphi (legacy)
§ Migrate from Delphi to C#
§ Business logic and Data Access tightly coupled
§ Oracle 12.1 on Unix
§ Europort backend application
§ Built with Magic
§ Oracle 12.1 on Unix
§ Complex system at this moment

6. 6 Postgres Vision 2018
IT Future
Core applications technology
§ Microservices
§ Containers
§ Rest API
§ PostgreSQL
§ CI/CD (daily)
§ Cloud ready

7. • Gartner placed EDB Postgres in magic quadrant
• Most mature open source DBMS technology
• Enterprise-class functionality and support
• Strong, independent community
• Oracle compatibility
7 Postgres Vision 2018
Why we will migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL
Reduce the costs and Gartner says it is possible
Fully ACID support • MVCC • Point in Time Recovery (PITR)‫‏‬ • Data and
Index Partitioning • Bitmap Indexes • ANSI Constraints • Triggers &
Stored Functions • Views & Data Types • Nested Transactions • Online
Backup • Online Reorganization • Foreign Keys • Streaming
Replications • Multi-Core Support • JSON Support • HStore

8. The goal
• migrate a small subsystem from Oracle to
PostgreSQL
The actions
• Installation of EDB PostgreSQL Advanced server
• Migrate the Oracle schema to PostgreSQL with the
EDB Postgres migration toolkit
• Test the application
The result
• The application runs without adjustment
• Initial load of software cache from 15 to 1 minute
8 Postgres Vision 2018
The start
The Pizza session

9. 9 Postgres Vision 2018
PROOF OF CONCEPT 1
The application PoC
The objective
• a working application
• Limited dataset migration
• Application migration
• Solve problems
• Data migration
• Test application
• Formal acceptance

10. 10 Postgres Vision 2018
PROOF OF CONCEPT 2
The infrastructure PoC
• Installation of EDB Postgres Advanced Server on
two CentOS servers (master/slave) and EDB
Failover Manager with witness node
• Configuration of EDB Postgres Advanced Server
with respect to performance, security and general
• Encrypting of columns
• Backup and recovery
• Authentication and authorization
• High availability
• Cloning of a cluster
• Building a query database

11. 11 Postgres Vision 2018
PROOF OF CONCEPT 3
The performance PoC
The objective of PoC 3 is to determine whether the
performance of PostgreSQL meets the requirements set
by BinckBank.
• Migrate the production Europort database from Oracle
to PostgreSQL with replication tool
• The response times should be the same or better
than on Oracle
• What is the difference in performance between virtual
and bare metal
• PostgreSQL outperformed Oracle in almost all cases
• We tested with PostgreSQL 9.5. (no parallel query)
• Bare metal average 20% better performance than
virtual

12. 12 Postgres Vision 2018
Results of PoC 3
Top 8 statements

13. 13 Postgres Vision 2018
The migration of Europort
§ Runs on Unix and Oracle database
§ Magic built a gateway for PostgreSQL (testing phase)
§ The migration of the database is simple
§ The software is more difficult:
§ Magic uses rowids in Oracle
§ Rownum usage
§ The software will be moved from Unix to Linux

14. • The 3 POCS provides quick insight into the feasibility
• The database migration is simple
• The application migration is harder
• Get help from a partner like Nibble-IT
• Use a replication tool for the migration
• The performance of PostgreSQL is great
14 Postgres Vision 2018
CONCLUSION