Amazon Web Services Inc. declared war on its rivals Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. today with the launch of a new service that makes it easier to migrate Structured Query Language databases to the AWS cloud.

Announced during Amazon’s virtual AWS re:Invent 2020 event, the new service is called Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL. It’s meant to work with Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, which is a fully managed, PostgreSQL-compatible and ACID-compliant relational database engine that runs in the Amazon cloud.

AWS Chief Executive Andy Jassy (pictured) told customers during the presentation that it’s time to “stop paying for SQL Server licenses you don’t need,” essentially saying they no longer need to keep throwing thousands of dollars at Microsoft to keep using SQL Server.

The open-source Babelfish goes much further than a standard database migration service does. It’s a translation layer for SQL Servers’ proprietary SQL dialect, T-SQL, and its communications protocol that makes it possible for anyone to switch to AWS Aurora PostgreSQL with ease, Jassy said.

The Babelfish service helps translate everything from SQL commands, cursors, catalog views and data types to triggers, stored procedures and functions, Amazon said.

Amazon’s cloud and open source executive Matt Asay wrote in a blog post that Babelfish makes it possible for PostgreSQL to understand database requests, including both commands and protocols, from applications created for SQL Server.

That means companies can now perform database migrations without doing any of the laborious manual work that involves, such as replacing database drivers and rewriting and verifying database requests.

Asay said it will result in “much faster ‘migrations’ with minimal developer effort. It’s also centered on ‘correctness,’ meaning applications designed to use SQL Server functionality will behave the same on PostgreSQL as they would on SQL Server.”

Jassy told SiliconANGLE in an exclusive interview this week that he believes companies are paying far too much to license traditional databases such as SQL Server and Oracle Database. He pointed to other disadvantages such as their extreme complexity, the requirement to keep a large staff on-premises to manage them, their proprietary nature and customer lock-in.

“Those relational databases are not appropriate for a lot of workloads,” he said. “If you look at Oracle and Microsoft, their offerings are expensive, proprietary, have high amounts of lock-in and they have licensing terms that are really punitive. Those vendors are constantly auditing their customers.”

Jassy also accused Microsoft of changing its licensing terms midstream in order to benefit itself at the expense of customers. “Just look at what Microsoft did with SQL Server over the last year or two where they basically told customers who had bought SQL Server licenses that they couldn’t use them on any other cloud than Microsoft,” he said.

Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL is a great alternative to proprietary database services, he argued, because it matches SQL Server on performance and availability and is simpler to use and more cost-effective. And now it’s easier than ever to move workloads to it.

“We have an accelerating number of customers who are looking to move away, not just from Oracle, but from SQL Server, because they’re really sick of what’s happening, and they don’t trust those companies anymore,” Jassy said. “I think customers in general are really fed up and sick of these commercial-grade, old-guard database providers who change the licensing terms whenever they want and the pricing whenever they want to suit themselves.”

Amazon plans to launch Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL in early 2021, and the open-source version will be available on GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license. It’s currently in preview starting today.

Photo: Giorgio Bonfiglio/Twitter