Update your databases now to avoid data debt

"On April 30, 2026, MySQL 8.0 will reach End of Life (EOL) status. As a Long Term Support release, MySQL 8.0 is at the heart of many applications, so there should be a lot of planning completed already around moving to new systems."

"Any migration should ideally start at least six months early to allow enough time for testing, compatibility checks, and successful cut-overs in advance of any end-of-life date. Yet the world of IT is rarely ideal; these applications might be critical to the business, leading to compressed timelines or even projects being postponed repeatedly."

"For teams that follow a best-of-breed approach and use multiple databases in their stacks for different workloads, the challenge is even greater. While staying put might work in the short term, it will lead to more problems and higher costs over time."

Several widely-used open source databases face end-of-life dates in 2026: MySQL 8.0 on April 30, PostgreSQL 14 in September, Redis 7.2 in February and 7.4 in November, and MongoDB 6.0 in June. Teams must plan database updates and migrations to avoid staying on unsupported versions, which creates security vulnerabilities and increases operational costs. While immediate migration carries risks, delaying too long compounds problems. Best practice recommends starting migrations at least six months before end-of-life dates to allow adequate testing and compatibility verification. Organizations using multiple databases face compounded challenges, and critical business applications may face compressed timelines or repeated postponements.

Read at InfoWorld