Migrating from versions before 3.0.0

Owned by Andrew Wills (Deactivated)
Last updated: Aug 18, 2009Version comment
2 min read

In Theory

The import/export tools are designed to be 100% backwards-compatible and provide an easy migration path from earlier versions to later versions. To that end, uP 3.1 (or 3.0, or 3.2) is responsible for supporting all XML documents (incl. layouts) that have been properly exported from uP 2.6 (or 2.5, or 3.0). If it doesn't work, it's a bug and should be reported in JIRA.

In Practice

In reality, versions of import/export before uP3 are less polished than 3.0.0 and above. When push comes to shove on a 2.6 -> 3.1 migration, keep these words in mind: "you're mileage may vary." If you do encounter any difficulty with your migration, please let the community know. Use JIRA to report a bug, or use the up-user mailing list to ask for help.

Here are two types of issues you might encounter in a 2.6 -> 3.1 migration:

  1. Regression: In this case, the support for pre-3.0 XML documents wasn't tested or maintained well enough over time, and there's simply a bug. Issues like these should be entered in JIRA so they can be tracked and fixed.
  2. Too Faithful Migration: Some times you don't actually want the the data from the existing portal. This sort of issue occurs, for example, when a channel fName or implementing Java class changes between versions. For these cases you really want something different from the data in your existing portal, but it's difficult to identify these situations before you hit them, fall on your face, and spend a couple hours looking into what went wrong. Some (but not all) of these issues are well-known and have baked-in recognition & resolution in the import/export tools. If you encounter one that's not addressed, let us know.

Here's another thing to consider: at one point Eric Dalquist created special branches of the portal framework designed to read an older (e.g. 2.6) database and export directly into a newer (e.g. 3.0) XML format. If it works, odds are that this approach will offer a couple advantages: (1) the XML will be closer to the the current format, and (2) the export operation will complete a lot more quickly (like 1 hour vs. 6-8 hours).

You can access these branches here: