> Since you are migrating data into a staging table in PostgreSQL, you may set
> the field data type as TEXT for each field where you have noticed or
> anticipate issues.
> Then after population perform the datatype transformation query on the given
> fields to determine the actual field value that could not be gracefully
> transformed.
This is the approach I have come to as the most successful for data migrations.
I will use tools like Kettle / Talend to get data into a staging table
with every column as text, then use SQL to migrate that to a properly
typed table. Works much better than trying to work within the
constraints of these tools.