Does AWS DMS only support migration to brand new tables in the target DB?

Question

We have a use case of migrating data from AWS DocumentDB to MySQL DB. In the target DB, we have an existing table where we want this ongoing migration to happen. Is this possible or does DMS only support migration to a brand new table in the target DB?

Answer

[Per the documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Target.MySQL.html), there is no limitation on the target table in a MySQL database destination.

Some of the limitations that are present are:
* The data definition language (DDL) statements `TRUNCATE PARTITION`, `DROP TABLE`, and `RENAME TABLE`.
* Using an `ALTER TABLE table_name ADD COLUMN` column_name statement to add columns to the beginning or the middle of a table.
* Aurora Serverless is available as a target for Amazon Aurora version 1.
* Using an Aurora Reader endpoint.

Since it sounds like you are doing continuous replication, also take a look at the [Ongoing replication task documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Task.CDC.html).

Does AWS DMS only support migration to brand new tables in the target DB?

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