export / import the application schema [since 1.5]

Administrative definitions that represent an application schema can be exported from one OBEROn database and imported into another. These operations are called "dump export" and "dump import" and can be performed by a "dump" OOQL command or directly with the Context Design client. From version 1.5 you can find a Dump menu that allow the following commands:

- export: extracts schema definitions into a local file
- import: loads some schema definitions from a local file
- compare: compares the database schema definition with those extracted from another OBEROn database (for example a development DB) and returns all found differences
- expand: extracts logical connections between administrative objects

For all these functions you can select the administrative object types and set a pattern to filter their names before the related process starts. In other terms you can select which administrative objects the system has to import/export from/to a file or to compare or to expand.

Export

Use the Dump Export command to export the definitions of a OBEROn database.

Admin Objects: are the administrative definition types to be exported. If you write the OOQL command, you can use the keyword "all" instead of listing all possible types.
[Right click on the "Admin Object" group title to show the select/unselect all popup]
Pattern: filters the definition's names to be exported; you can use the usual "*" and "?" wildcards to indicate "any number of characters" and "a single character" respectively.
Full: if activated extracts additional information; this is not needed to re-generate the schema in a new database instance or for comparison.
Image: if not activated excludes from the result the icon associated with the administrative objects. When exporting administrative objects, the associated icons are included by default.
Feature: if activated extracts also the administrative object features
File: is the name of a new or existing file to which to write the export data.
XML: at the moment has no influence for the result because only XML export are supported.
Append: if activated, appends the export data to an existing file.

Import

Use the Dump Import command to import administrative objects from an export file to a OBEROn database.

Admin Objects: are the administrative definition types to be imported. If you write the OOQL command, you can use the keyword "all" instead of listing all possible types.
[Right click on the "Admin Object" group title to show the select/unselect all popup]
Pattern: filters the definition's names to be imported; you can use the usual "*" and "?" wildcards to indicate "any number of characters" and "a single character" respectively.
Image: when importing administrative objects, the associated icons are included by default; by deactivating this option the icon can be omitted. [If the icon was omitted during the export, it cannot be retrieved from the file during the import]
Feature: if activated imports also the administrative object features [If the features were omitted during the export, it cannot be retrieved from the file during the import]
Resume: tells the import process to continue with additional imports even if an error occurs.
Overwrite: the overwrite option tells the import process to modify any objects that are found to already exist. Without the overwrite flag, if an administrative object exists, the import will fail, since it will try to create a new object with the same name as an existing object.
Commit: the import process is made under database transactions; this parameter specifies the number of objects to enclose in each transaction.
File: is the path and name of the existing file from which to import the administrative definitions.
XML: sets the import file type as XML

Compare

Compare two schemas to determine the differences between them. You can use the schema comparison to compare:
• Different versions of the same schema to manage changes to the schema.
• Two schemas from different databases so you can merge the schemas (for example,
merge a development system with a production system).

Expand

With this function you can search and extract all logical connections or interactions between administrative objects.

Admin Objects: are the administrative definition types to be expanded. If you write the OOQL command, you can use the keyword "all" instead of listing all possible types.
Pattern: filters the definition's names to be expanded; you can use the usual "*" and "?" wildcards to indicate "any number of characters" and "a single character" respectively.
Feature: if activated, extracts also the administrative object's features
File: is the name of a new or existing file to which to write the information.
XML: sets the result file type as XML
Append: if activated, appends the export data to an existing file.

For each object that satisfies the filters will be presented a list of administration objects related with it. The versus indicates if the current object is referenced inside another (from) or the declaration is made directly in it (to). For example, a class can have a certain number of fields: if you expand the class all its fields are indicated with the "to" versus because the class definition include the field list. On the other hand, if you expand one of these fields, you can find the class with the versus "from" because the field is referenced by that class.