Most organizations develop and update content in a development environment and then migrate finalized content to their production catalog. Similarly, organizations want to migrate changes in their production catalog to Disaster Recovery (DR) environments. Oracle Analytics offers several ways to migrate catalog content.
- Snapshot migration: Snapshot migration is useful when you want to synchronize two environments. This is because the snapshot (BAR file) contains everything, that is, the content catalog, data model (RPD), datasets, connections, application roles, and so on.
- Archive and unarchive functionality: Enables you to manually migrate catalog items between two environments.
- Incremental migration script: Migrates catalog objects recently modified in your source environment to your target environment. This method enables you to synchronize catalog content across two different environments, reduces migration time, and uses fewer resources. *NEW*
The new incremental migration script leverages Oracle Analytics Web services with Python to migrate only incremental changes to the catalog from the source environment to the target environment. You set parameters in the script to define your source and target environment details, your login credentials, and how many days of changes you want to migrate. For example, if you set the dayago parameter to three, the script scans the catalog in the source environment for modifications within the last three days (current date – 3). Only content created or modified within the last three days is migrated to the target environment using catalog archive and unarchive functionality.
The script also includes a path parameter, so you can run the script against a specific catalog folder rather than the entire catalog. The value of the path parameter can be either /shared or a child folder of the shared folder (for example /shared/IncrementalMigration). It’s up to you to adjust the granularity of this parameter to suit your migration requirements.
The Idea Behind Incremental Changes
Supported Content Types
The catalog in Oracle Analytics contains many different types of content. Currently, the migration script described in this blog doesn’t migrate every content type. However, we’re constantly adding more content types so always download the latest script.
Supported content types are:
- Data visualization workbooks
- Classic analyses
- Classic dashboards
- Agents and ibots
- Filters
- Publisher data models
- Publisher reports
How to Run the Python Script
- Download the incremental catalog migration script.
- Enter details about your source environment. Edit the following parameters:
- source_url
- sourceusername
- sourcepassword
- Enter details about your target environment. Edit the following parameters:
- target_url
- targetusername
- targetpassword
- Set the daysago parameter to the number of days you want to include changes from.
- Set the path parameter to the catalog folder path you want to run the script against.
- Run the script using Python.
The Script in Action
This sample source environment shows two reports recently created or modified (shown by the last modified date).
The sample target environment doesn’t include these changes yet. You know this because the last modified date doesn’t match the date in the source environment.
After you run the migration script, you see the two recently updated reports in the target environment and the last modified date confirms this.
Call to Action
Download the script, and then follow the steps in this blog to migrate recently updated content in your catalog between your source and target environments. Share your experience with the Oracle Analytics Community.