What the Oracle contract imposes

• Twelve months, non-cancelable. The support period is paid in advance; once the order is placed, it is "non-cancelable" and the sums are "non-refundable" [1]. Any reduction takes effect only at the next anniversary.
• No reduction à la carte. All the licences in the same set must be supported at the same level. Stopping support on part of them requires terminating those licences by letter [1][4], and the remaining licences are then repriced at list price less the standard discount, between a floor and a ceiling set by the policy [1].
• Coming back costs more than staying. Support that is interrupted and then resumed is paid at 150 % of the last annual fee, pro rata since the interruption, plus the current year [1].
• The annual increase is quantified nowhere. The policy speaks of "renewal adjustments" with no amount; a cap, if there is one, is in your order [1].
• The non-renewal notice period is not in the public texts. A licensing adviser places it between 30 and 90 days, 56 as a rule, depending on the contract [13].
• The audit: 45 days' written notice, then 30 days to remedy a finding, with the cost of cooperation borne by you [4]. The 45 days are the period before the audit begins, not a period for handing over data.
• Two policies that are not contracts. The cloud policy admits AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, but the licences of a ULA running there do not count towards the end-of-term certification [5]. The partitioning policy places VMware among the "soft" partitions, which do not limit the number of licences [6]. Both declare themselves non-contractual; they bind as soon as a signed amendment incorporates them.

Which deadline concerns you

A 19c estate has time; an 11.2 or 12.x estate does not, and for it staying means upgrading, which is already a project. If your support anniversary falls before 31 December 2026, it is the anniversary that sets the calendar.

What makes a database hard or impossible to migrate

1. An application certified on Oracle only. None of the certification matrices read mentions PostgreSQL: SAP ERP and Business One, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, Sage X3, Sage FRP 1000, Cegid, Dynamics 365 Business Central. Sage X3 V12 certifies Oracle 19c and SQL Server 2022 [16]. The SAP matrix sits behind a login and was not read [17]. A database that carries such an application does not migrate until the application is replaced.
2. Oracle Forms. No tool converts Forms screens automatically, and Oracle's assistant leads to ADF, that is from Oracle to Oracle [15]. A Forms application is rewritten; it is not migrated.
3. PL/SQL in volume. Porting the stored code is "the largest part of the migration in terms of complexity and time"; migrating the schema and the data "is often marginal compared with the time spent migrating the code" [14].
4. Spatial, Advanced Queuing, Oracle Text, RAC. These functions have no direct equivalent, or no assessed parity; PostgreSQL offers no shared-storage active-active cluster comparable to RAC. The detail, tool by tool, is in the dossier.

Assessment tools (Ora2Pg, AWS Schema Conversion Tool) produce a score per object; none quantifies the total effort of a project.

Three paths, and what breaks each one

No path can be costed without the inventory of the estate, and "staying" cannot be renegotiated without reading the order.

What is found only in your documents

In your order

• The support anniversary date and the non-renewal notice period.
• A cap on the annual increase, if there is one.
• A ULA and its end date.
• An audit notification in progress.

In your estate

• For each database: edition (EE or SE2), metric (Processor or Named User Plus), licence type, place of execution (your servers, a hosting provider, a cloud admitted by Oracle, VMware) and version.
• The publishers' applications that rely on these databases and their certification, to be requested from each publisher.
• The code inventory: PL/SQL, packages, queues, Spatial, Text, Forms screens.

In your organisation

• The NIS2 class, which decides whether the April 2026 and 2027 deadlines concern you [11].
• The budget cycle and the state of the 2027 budget [12].

Nothing is required by 31 December 2026: no switch-over, no termination, no final decision. What is most often missing is the inventory and the reading of these dates.

What other organisations have decided

• Left. DNS Belgium switched its registration platform from Oracle to PostgreSQL on 7 May 2026, citing Oracle's licensing policy and dependence on non-European players [18]. Météo-France has required PostgreSQL for every new project since 2016 and has migrated databases from Oracle [19]. Smals concluded in 2022 a PostgreSQL framework agreement with a migration-tool lot [20], while still operating Oracle [24].
• Stayed. The Swiss Confederation bought by direct award in 2016, on the ground that no suitable alternative existed [21]. Baloise Bank migrated in 2026 to Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer because a large part of its business logic is in PL/SQL [22]. Basel University Hospital is renewing its Exadata infrastructure because of end of support [23].

The documented market does not rule: both movements coexist. Departures are mostly told by the organisations themselves, often years later; stays, by the partners who sold them.