Database reload

Migration
1

I have a large phpbb database I am migrating. I want to do most of the migration while the old site remains active. Then, on migration weekend, rerun the migration script after reloading the database. This will reduce the migration weekend only to import a couple of thousand user posts versus 300,000.

  1. is this feasible? Does the migration script maintain the restart points outside the MySQL database?
  2. is there an easy way to make the script upload a new database dump without resetting the previous work or duplicating it?

Any best practices or suggestions would be welcomed.

2

Yes, the phpbb import script supports that. Simply rerun the script after loading your updated sql database. It will skip existing content and add what’s missing to Discourse.

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3

Thank you for your reply. Clarification on the reply of “after loading your updated SQL database.”

Does this mean the import script will automagically recognize a new dump file and will update the database? Or does this mean, I need to refresh the database with updated data manually?

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4

You need to delete the older database from MySQL, import your latest sql file as a new database, and run the import script which will load the newest database.

The script will iterate through all the database content, detect if some content (users, posts, etc.) already exists in Discourse, and will import only the new data.

1 Like
5

Thank you for that clarification.

6

@CocoQuark thanks for your instructions to migration, just an query incase if records gets delete(ex: product or product option deleted) from the table.

Does the script update those rows of table?

7

No, and it will also not detect updates (edits) to posts and users.

2 Likes
8

To provide an update. I performed my phpBB migration in a two step method.

First Migration

While my current phpBB system was still in productions state I did the following:

  • Followed the standard phpBB migration guideline
  • Took a sql dump of my current phpBB database
  • Copied over all files and avatars.

This allowed me to migrate the majority of data and test everything out with real data. After validating the data and setting up the new Discourse system. I moved on to a second migration activity.

Second Migration

This time I shut down my phpBB forum.

I ran the import script a second time:

  • Updated the files and avatars with any new files since first migration.
  • Replaced the mysql dump with a new dump file.

I ran the import script. Since the process only had to import a couple of weeks worth of data, the script took less than 15 minutes.

Everything ran smoothly.

If you have a large phpBB forum to migrate, I highly recommend the two phase approach for migration.

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