I work for a very small company. I was recently faced with the question of whether there is a good way to convert a proprietary database to a MySQL database without owning the proprietary database engine e.g. if one is given a large oracle database file (or choose your favorite proprietary database engine format), but doesn't have a license for the oracle database engine, is there a good, perfectly reliable way to convert it to a MySQL database format that can be read with the MySQL database engine? My question is very vague as to which proprietary format is the source just because there would be multiple sources and it looks like they would be "various and sundry". My suspicion is that there is no perfectly reliable way, especially for a wide variety of proprietary databases. If there are a few proprietary formats for which this is possible, I would still be interested in knowing, though "various and sundry" is probably the real issue. Minimizing cost, effort and correct conversion are key so I think this is probably is the not possible list.

-John