Re: [Gemstone-Smalltalk] Exporting data from an end of life GS64 system to a relational DB?

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Re: [Gemstone-Smalltalk] Exporting data from an end of life GS64 system to a relational DB?

Ivan J Markulin

 

Consider an XML option … step one,  write GS objects to an XML file (one or more depending on the size and complexity of your data). Step two,  load your XML file into your new database.    

 

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Dennis Smith
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 03:24 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [GemStone-Smalltalk] Exporting data from an end of life GS64 system to a relational DB?

 

I think if I had to do this, I would dump my major business objects to some form of ascii-loadable
files and go from there.

The advantage is that you can create whatever you want, likely fairly quickly AND that you can always
edit the result if need-be.

Of course a lot depends on how you business objects are structured and how well that can map to
a relational model -- but if its a "business" there must be a reasonable mapping at some level I would think.

We have used sql-ascii dump format and .csv to get data out to other people with those funny database things.

On 2012-03-15 12:55 PM, William Erickson wrote:

> From looking at the docs, GemConnect does not seem like a good fit. It seems more concerned with reflecting changes made to a
> relational database into GemStone than the other way around.

Not true.  There are capabilities in GemConnect that allow you to "write" a GS Object to an SQL table, once you've established a mapping between the object's instvars and the fields in the table.  The tricky part is handling more complex mapping requirements like 1-to-many and many-to-many mappings.  At one time we had developed a tool that did that for taking relational data and porting it into GemStone, but we never completed the task for going in the other direction...

--

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Erickson        VMware/SpringSource/GemStone/Smalltalk Engineering
Software Engineer    15220 NW Greenbrier Parkway #150
[hidden email]     Beaverton OR 97006
------------------------------------------------------------------------





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-- 
Dennis Smith                                   +1 416.798.7948
Cherniak Software Development Corporation   Fax: +1 416.798.0948
509-2001 Sheppard Avenue East        [hidden email]
Toronto, ON M2J 4Z8              [hidden email]
Canada                          http://www.CherniakSoftware.com
Entrance off Yorkland Blvd south of Sheppard Ave east of the DVP

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Re: [Gemstone-Smalltalk] Exporting data from an end of life GS64 system to a relational DB?

Thierry Thelliez
Hello,

(I do not really have an answer to your question.  But I just wanted to share a recent experience/story.  BTW, that's great to see some discussions flowing again in this email list ;-)

Last year we had similar requirements to export every week our GemStone content into an SQLServer database managed by another team/company.

We spent a huge amount of effort preparing the data in a format that could be imported (we opted for CSV), including meta data.  Just solving the syntactic aspect of the project was a pain: field length limitations, character limitations, …   But this export was eventually abandoned because the data schema is too heterogenous, dynamic and versioned for a more traditional RDBMS approach. In other words, our problem here was not that much to translate object relationships but to import a variable data schema.

But that 'feature' will comeback this year.  Our customer still wants to mine the data in a so-called Business Intelligence system.  That will require populating a system like Pentaho from GemStone, unless we can continue developing our reports within GemStone itself.


Cheers,
Thierry Thelliez
www.doxcelerate.com

 

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Dennis Smith
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 03:24 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [GemStone-Smalltalk] Exporting data from an end of life GS64 system to a relational DB?

 

I think if I had to do this, I would dump my major business objects to some form of ascii-loadable
files and go from there.

The advantage is that you can create whatever you want, likely fairly quickly AND that you can always
edit the result if need-be.

Of course a lot depends on how you business objects are structured and how well that can map to
a relational model -- but if its a "business" there must be a reasonable mapping at some level I would think.

We have used sql-ascii dump format and .csv to get data out to other people with those funny database things.

On 2012-03-15 12:55 PM, William Erickson wrote:

> From looking at the docs, GemConnect does not seem like a good fit. It seems more concerned with reflecting changes made to a
> relational database into GemStone than the other way around.

Not true.  There are capabilities in GemConnect that allow you to "write" a GS Object to an SQL table, once you've established a mapping between the object's instvars and the fields in the table.  The tricky part is handling more complex mapping requirements like 1-to-many and many-to-many mappings.  At one time we had developed a tool that did that for taking relational data and porting it into GemStone, but we never completed the task for going in the other direction...

--

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Erickson        VMware/SpringSource/GemStone/Smalltalk Engineering
Software Engineer    15220 NW Greenbrier Parkway #150
[hidden email]     Beaverton OR 97006
------------------------------------------------------------------------





_______________________________________________
GemStone-Smalltalk mailing list
Archive: http://forum.world.st/Gemstone-Customers-f1461796.html
 



-- 
Dennis Smith                                   +1 416.798.7948
Cherniak Software Development Corporation   Fax: +1 416.798.0948
509-2001 Sheppard Avenue East        [hidden email]
Toronto, ON M2J 4Z8              [hidden email]
Canada                          http://www.CherniakSoftware.com
Entrance off Yorkland Blvd south of Sheppard Ave east of the DVP
_______________________________________________ GemStone-Smalltalk mailing list Archive: http://forum.world.st/Gemstone-Customers-f1461796.html

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Archive: http://forum.world.st/Gemstone-Customers-f1461796.html