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Aramar Tips: Moving Databases in Planning Analytics

4 min read

In IBM Planning Analytics Cloud or on-premise, you may need to move databases between environments. #

We have created a checklist you can use to move your database from production into development, then from development to production. Before running through the checklist, we’d like to mention a couple of structural things. In a TM1 model, we create a few extra folders and subfolders to move objects around. We have a ‘<database name>\MIGRATION’ folder that we use to port objects. A ‘\MIGRATION \IN’ folder to hold objects that we are bringing into the database and a ‘\MIGRATION \OUT’ folder to hold objects ported out of the database.

In addition, we have folders within these for the specific instance of a transfer. We name these in the format ‘yymmdd-<description of the transfer reason’ e.g., ‘220321-Create Month End Reset’. We copy the objects in development into a folder called ‘\INPROGRESS’ to ensure that any ongoing work does not get overwritten.

In this example, we want to take a complete database from production into development to have up-to-date data.

Move the database from production into live #

Ensure everyone is logged off the model in the production environment.
Commit the production database to disk by running the SAVEDATAALL command.
Stop the production database.
Create a new folder in the <database name>\MIGRATION\OUT directory, e.g., ‘220321-Create Month End Reset Test’.
Copy and compress the database to this new folder.
Restart the database.
Let colleagues know that the production environment is available again.
Copy the backed-up database to a <database name>\MIGRATION\IN directory on the development environment.
Ensure colleagues have logged off the development environment.
Copy any IBM Planning Objects currently in development to a folder, such as <database name>\INPROGRESS.
Commit the development database to disk by running the SAVEDATAALL command.
Stop the development database.
Rename the <database name>\DATA folder to something like <database name>\DATA_yymmdd. Extract the compressed file in the <database name>\MIGRATION\IN folder and populate the <database name>\DATA folder with the objects.
Overwrite the objects in the <database name>\DATA with the objects in the <database name>\INPROGRESS folder so that you have the latest version of the objects in development.
Start the development database.
Check you’ve got up-to-date data in the database and have the objects you have been working on in the database, and they are all OK.
If everything is OK, let everyone working on the development environment know and either delete or move to the <database name>\BACKUP folder the database name>\DATA_yymmdd folder. Otherwise, stop the development database, delete the <database name>\DATA folder you had transferred and rename the database name>\DATA_yymmdd folder back to database name>\DATA and restart the development database, work out what went wrong and restart from the appropriate place.

Move objects from development to production #

Ensure everyone is logged off the model in the development environment.
Commit the development database to disk by running the SAVEDATAALL command.
Stop the development database.
Create a new folder in the <database name>\MIGRATION\OUT directory, e.g., ‘220321-Create Month End Reset’.
Move the IBM Planning Analytics objects that you want to transfer to the production or live environment.
Restart the development database.
Let colleagues know that the development environment is available again.
Make a backup copy of the <database name>\DATA folder or rename it temporarily.
Copy the <database name>\MIGRATION\OUT directory on the development environment to a <database name>\MIGRATION\IN directory on the production environment.
Ensure colleagues have logged off the production environment.
Commit the production database to disk by running the SAVEDATAALL command.
Copy the IBM Planning Objects in the <database name>\MIGRATION\IN folder containing the new objects to the <database name>\DATA folder and overwrite any objects.
Restart the production server.
Check that you’ve got the up-to-date objects in the model and that they are all OK.
If everything is OK, then broadcast to everyone working on the live environment that they can resume and either delete or move to the <database name>\BACKUP folder the database name>\DATA_yymmdd folder. Otherwise, stop the production database, delete the <database name>\DATA folder you had transferred and rename the database name>\DATA_yymmdd folder back to database name>\DATA and restart the production database.