Retaining Data in Jackrabbit Upgrade

[Melanie Drake <me...@gmail.com>]

I have many customers using Jackrabbit 1.6.1.  Each customer has generated
a lot of data.  I am looking to upgrade from 1.6.1 to the latest stable
version (2.4.3) of Jackrabbit.  I need to retain the data generated with
1.6.1.

 From what I understand:

   - Prior to v2.0, Jackrabbit used "simple" transactions. With simple
   transactions, one action (e.g., change a property, check in a file, etc.)
   is performed at a time.
   - Jackrabbit 2.0 and above uses bundled transactions (i.e., many
   requests are made at once).
   - The Jackrabbit database schema for simple vs. bundled transactions
   varies.
   - There is currently no procedure to upgrade a database from a simple
   schema to a bundled schema.

(If I got any of this wrong, kindly let me know.)

Ok, here are my questions:

What are my options for retaining the 1.6.1 data after upgrading to 2.4.3?

Is there an option to continue to use simple transactions in 2.4.3?   So, I
would continue to use the 'old' (1.6.1) schema with Jackrabbit 2.4.3.  (If
no mechanism is provided to convert the data, it seems reasonable to retain
but deprecate the API for simple transactions.)  If this is an option, are
there known issues?

Is it possible to convert a 1.6.1 database to the schema used in 2.4.3?

Thanks!

-Melanie

Re: Retaining Data in Jackrabbit Upgrade

[Jukka Zitting <ju...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 4:39 PM, Melanie Drake <me...@gmail.com>wrote:

>    - Prior to v2.0, Jackrabbit used "simple" transactions. With simple
>    transactions, one action (e.g., change a property, check in a file,
> etc.)
>    is performed at a time.
>    - Jackrabbit 2.0 and above uses bundled transactions (i.e., many
>    requests are made at once).
>

Not really. The granularity of stored data is different in the "simple" and
"bundle" persistence managers (both of which are still present, just the
default configuration changed), but the transactions (i.e. atomic changes)
are the same in all cases.


>    - The Jackrabbit database schema for simple vs. bundled transactions
>    varies.
>

Yes.


>    - There is currently no procedure to upgrade a database from a simple
>    schema to a bundled schema.
>

No, there is. As pointed out in the other thread, the backup and migration
tool can be used for this:
http://jackrabbit.apache.org/standalone-server.html#StandaloneServer-Backupandmigration


> What are my options for retaining the 1.6.1 data after upgrading to 2.4.3?
>

The simplest case is to do nothing. Jackrabbit 2.x will still support your
1.6.1 data without problems, though without migration you won't be able to
benefit from the performance improvements of bundle persistence.


> Is there an option to continue to use simple transactions in 2.4.3?   So, I
> would continue to use the 'old' (1.6.1) schema with Jackrabbit 2.4.3.  (If
> no mechanism is provided to convert the data, it seems reasonable to retain
> but deprecate the API for simple transactions.)  If this is an option, are
> there known issues?
>

Yes, it's possible. I'm not aware of any known issues with such
deployments, though I don't know for sure how many people are still using
simple persistence with Jackrabbit 2.x.


> Is it possible to convert a 1.6.1 database to the schema used in 2.4.3?


Yes, see the migration documentation.

BR,

Jukka Zitting