Question

What kind of database the Sql Server Migration Assistant uses as an internal data repository and stores it in the source-metabase.mb file?

I guess that this it is one of standard tool that I could use to open and edit some entries (I need to autamatically add some custom scripts for tables with BLOBs data migration )

You could also just suggest the way how to check most popular database formats: SqlServer Compact, MySQL, Access..

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Solution

it is one of standard tool that I could use to open and edit some entries

I would not count on it :) It was a proprietary metadata format that has nothing to do with DB products that SSMA supports. It can store metadata for representing Oracle and also SQL Server among others, obviously formats are not connected with file structure that actual DBs use. SSMA format has no open docs, also it may fail to synchronize your changes after manual intervention if you reverse engineer it (due to the fact it was designed just as the migration tool to target SQL Server and was supposed to mostly create new objects there based on source database counterparts).

Can you just write some stored procedures or triggers in your database? For most DBs metadata is exposed as special tables/views anyway. Probably you need to do it only for SQL Server as it's your target db after migration, right? Looking into ways to directly parse or manipulate files managed by "big" DB (like SQL Server or Oracle) doesn't seem to be a good idea for most scenarios. (except digital forensics, for example)

SQL Server metadata related views are here and functions are here. You may profile your SQL Server instance while connecting to it with SSMA just to get some feel what it does to extract metadata (object names, columns of tables, source of SPs etc.)

Data manipulation is pretty much clear from the DB side if you need it too.

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