Re: Data loss: suggestions for handling
On Fri, Aug 01, 2003 at 11:36:52AM -0400, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 01, 2003 at 07:51:46PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > The latest upstream version of a package I've begun to maintain, IRM, has a
> > problem in that a portion of the data in the system (relating to software
> > and licence assignment) can't be upgraded along with the rest of the
> > database - the schema is totally different.
>
> Even if the schema is different, if it represents the same data, it should
> be possible to convert it. Maybe someone here (or upstream) can help with
> this. What instructions does upstream provide for the upgrade? Do they say
> that you must destroy this data and recreate it?
>From the look of it, they're storing different information in different
ways. There's an upgrade script for the rest of the system (implemented as
a web-fronted PHP script) with hundreds of SQL commands to do funky things
to most parts of the system. It's fairly obvious that they've tried to keep
upgrading as simple as possible - but they haven't been able to make the
software part backwards-compatible.
I should have made that clearer in my first message - it's not a matter of
writing the upgrade script, it's trying to work out a method of minimising
the disruption from this (apparently) necessary data loss.
>From suggestions I've received, I think I'm going to go with making a dump
of the whole database to /var/backups, and putting notes in README.Debian
and NEWS.Debian about the data loss. Then people can downgrade and
recreate their old tables if they don't want to go through the pain of
re-importing all their software licencing information.
Any other places I should notify people of the loss? E-mail to root? I'm
not going to put a debconf note in because I *know* that's not what it's
for.
- Matt
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