database upgrade question

Your advise would be greatly appreciated for the following questions.

o. If someone makes a change to the existing database schema,  Is that person responsible for providing some sort of data upgrade process as well.  This would be the case, if some admin is installing the latest version of ofbiz(which comes with a schema change) on top of their currently running ofbiz installation.

o. What is the general procedure to letting the community know that when upgrading to a newer version of ofbiz source, one needs to perform some database data upgrade as well.

o. Is there a mechanism used in ofbiz project to label the existing database or database schema with a particular version number. So that a particular running version of ofbiz can detect and perhaps adapt to any schema changes.

[BJ Freeman]

ofbiz uses entity and the webtools to export and re-import data.
there is a couple of things that have to manually done to the export,
like removing data if a field has been removed or re-naming a field if
the entity has been modified.

Depending on the actual Database, you may be able to export it, but you
would still need to massage the data before re-importing as above.
Any such Database operation you propose would be custom. Not sure if
they would be supported in ofbiz, since they are DB specific.




Yin T sent the following on 3/12/2008 1:32 PM:

> Your advise would be greatly appreciated for the following questions.
>
> o. If someone makes a change to the existing database schema,  Is that
> person responsible for providing some sort of data upgrade process as well.
> This would be the case, if some admin is installing the latest version of
> ofbiz(which comes with a schema change) on top of their currently running
> ofbiz installation.
>
> o. What is the general procedure to letting the community know that when
> upgrading to a newer version of ofbiz source, one needs to perform some
> database data upgrade as well.
>
> o. Is there a mechanism used in ofbiz project to label the existing database
> or database schema with a particular version number. So that a particular
> running version of ofbiz can detect and perhaps adapt to any schema changes.

[Christopher L]

This is an issue that has been in the back of my mind, as the current "upgrade process" is basically manual reconciliation.  Unfortunately, it's far down on my list right now.

YT, if this is a particular issue for you, you might consider some extension to the entity classes to reconcile the existing db table structure against the entity xml files and perform table updates as needed.  The work might be a little more in the short term, but would easily pay back after a few upgrades.

My 2c.

C

> Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:34:26 -0800
> From: [hidden email]
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: database upgrade question
>
> ofbiz uses entity and the webtools to export and re-import data.
> there is a couple of things that have to manually done to the export,
> like removing data if a field has been removed or re-naming a field if
> the entity has been modified.
>
> Depending on the actual Database, you may be able to export it, but you
> would still need to massage the data before re-importing as above.
> Any such Database operation you propose would be custom. Not sure if
> they would be supported in ofbiz, since they are DB specific.
>
>
>
>
> Yin T sent the following on 3/12/2008 1:32 PM:
> > Your advise would be greatly appreciated for the following questions.
> >
> > o. If someone makes a change to the existing database schema,  Is that
> > person responsible for providing some sort of data upgrade process as well.
> > This would be the case, if some admin is installing the latest version of
> > ofbiz(which comes with a schema change) on top of their currently running
> > ofbiz installation.
> >
> > o. What is the general procedure to letting the community know that when
> > upgrading to a newer version of ofbiz source, one needs to perform some
> > database data upgrade as well.
> >
> > o. Is there a mechanism used in ofbiz project to label the existing database
> > or database schema with a particular version number. So that a particular
> > running version of ofbiz can detect and perhaps adapt to any schema changes.
>