Content Store restore

[pimogo]

I'm slightly confused after seeing unexpected results during my last restore as to how a restore actually works. My impression initially was that a restore would wipe whatever was there and replace it with a mirror copy of the restore contents. That is not what i observed however.

A little background, first. I have two environments (i.e. DEV & QA). We made some organizational changes to QA and wanted to replace DEV with a mirror copy of QA. Easy enough, right? We thought that after the restore DEV would look exactly like QA. What we observed however was that although it looked mostly alike, some things were retained in DEV. DEV had a few extra data sources and security groups, for example, and these were retained, inexplicably. Granted, data sources could easily be deleted, but security groups caused some problems and more importantly, it threw into question our assumptions.

So my question is why did this happen, and how can I ensure going forward that any restores first wipe all content in the target environment and then restore a 100% mirror of the imported content store?

Thanks!
-Hugo

[cognostechie]

Depends on how you restored it. Was it a DB restore or dump and load from QA to DEV using Cognos deployment method?

[pimogo]

thanks for the response. it was an export using Cognos' deployment method and then again an import using the same method.

[cognostechie]

If you want to do a 100% mirror then you can do a backup of the Content Store DB from QA and restore it over the Content Store DB of DEV. That way both of them will be 100% identical.

The Cognos deployment method will do 100% mirror only when you create a brand new Content Store DB for the target environment and then do a export from source and import into target.

[pimogo]

Thanks for the great suggestion. Problem i see is when have to move from a SQL server DB to an ORACLE, which we're planning later in the year. Also is there any document that says what exactly is not replaced through the deployment method? WOuld be helpful so we can track those items manually if need be.

Thanks again!

[MFGF]

Thanks for the great suggestion. Problem i see is when have to move from a SQL server DB to an ORACLE, which we're planning later in the year. Also is there any document that says what exactly is not replaced through the deployment method? WOuld be helpful so we can track those items manually if need be.

Thanks again!

Hi,

Changing the content store type from SQL Server to Oracle should be OK - as long as you have a full deployment archive created through the Cognos Admin console. Everything will get transferred - the key point is that to get a 100% mirror you need to restore into an empty content store database, not one that already has content defined. Restoring into a content store with content already defined might result in the target content store containing more content than the source content store - but you will not lose content.

MF.