Quote Originally Posted by nasomi View Post
As a programmer, I understand the complexity of hte task. However character files are merely that, files. No one in their right mind would store character information in a database. What, a new table for every character? Or one table, with a billion columns with an x for every flag/item/etc? They're stored in files. So, if you even went with a new database, it wouldn't be that hard to write a script to re-write the character files for hte new database format, because new file format for storing character data is very reasonable. However a batch job to convert what, 20,000 character files to the new format? far from difficult.
For what it's worth, the poll states that they have to migrate the data for several hundred thousand characters.

It doesn't matter how simple the task is. What matters is that SE says they need a few months to complete the transfer. We just have to accept that.