Move content from pilot/sandbox to production

When a customer is working on a new site, they are generally creating and modifying their content in the pilot/sandbox environment until they are ready to go live. During that process, it is common to want to move the content from one site to another.

This data is contained within several tables: ContentItem, ContentItemField, and ContentPageState.

This document will outline the general approach to migrating this data from one place to another. There is an assumption that the database lives on separate servers.

In general, the approach is to create a transfer database, populate it with the data to move, move the db to the new environment and merge the data. The scripts and documentation below adhere to this approach.

It is further presumed by this documentation that the user wishes to copy the content from the Sandbox (pilot) server to the Production server. We will be using the database named ContentTransfer for the transfer db and Insite.Commerce.SourceDB for the source database and Insite.Commerce.TargetDB for the targetDB. It is more likely that the source and target databases will be named the same, just reside on different servers.

1. Create an empty transfer database on the Sandbox server.

2. The scripts will resolve any differences in native IDs for the language, user, and persona but the website ID MUST MATCH EXACTLY between the two systems. If they don't once you have the data in the ContentTransfer tables, update the WebsiteId.

3. The personas and language must exist in the target db even if they may not have the same ID values – the script will use the natural keys to find the corresponding language and persona and reassign it.

4. Because content has users, language and persona associated with it, we will need to isolate the associated data in the content tables and insure it is available as we post it over ot the target db. Use the following:

   Text

   USE [ContentTransfer]
   IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'ContentPageState')  DROP TABLE ContentPageState
   IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'ContentItemField') DROP TABLE ContentItemField
   IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'ContentItem') DROP TABLE ContentItem
   IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'UserProfile') DROP TABLE UserProfile
   IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'Language') DROP TABLE Language
   IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'Persona') DROP TABLE Persona
   GO
   USE [Insite.Commerce.SourceDB]  
   SELECT _ INTO ContentTransfer.dbo.ContentItem FROM ContentItem  
   SELECT _ INTO ContentTransfer.dbo.ContentItemField FROM ContentItemField  
   SELECT _ INTO ContentTransfer.dbo.ContentPageState FROM ContentPageState  
   SELECT _ INTO ContentTransfer.dbo.Language FROM Language  
   SELECT _ INTO ContentTransfer.dbo.Persona FROM Persona  
   SELECT _ INTO ContentTransfer.dbo.UserProfile FROM UserProfile WHERE ID IN  
   (SELECT DISTINCT CreatedById FROM ContentItem WHERE CreatedById IS NOT NULL  
   UNION  
   SELECT DISTINCT ApprovedById FROM ContentItem WHERE ApprovedById IS NOT NULL  
   UNION  
   SELECT DISTINCT CreatedById FROM ContentItemField WHERE CreatedById IS NOT NULL  
   UNION  
   SELECT DISTINCT ApprovedById FROM ContentItemField WHERE ApprovedById IS NOT NULL)
   

5. The steps above effectively gather all the data required to transfer the data. Next take a backup of the ContentTransfer db and restore it in the target environment and run the following script to replace the target data with the source data.

   📘

   Note

   This will overwrite any existing CMS content with the new data. Make sure to have a backup of the target db in case there is an issue and do this in off hours so that you can restore the db if there is a problem.

   Product content, dealer content, specifications and category content are stored in different tables and this is not going to affect that data.

   Text

   -- Script to reset any IDs in the source tables
   BEGIN TRANSACTION
   
   USE ContentTransfer
   ALTER TABLE Persona ADD  NewId uniqueidentifier NULL
   ALTER TABLE Language ADD  NewId uniqueidentifier NULL
   ALTER TABLE UserProfile ADD  NewId uniqueidentifier NULL
   GO
   
   UPDATE Persona SET NewId = (SELECT Id from [Insite.Commerce.TargetDB].dbo.Persona np WHERE np.Name = Persona.name)
   UPDATE Persona SET NewId = (SELECT Id from [Insite.Commerce.TargetDB].dbo.Persona np where np.IsDefault = 1) WHERE Persona.NewId IS NULL
   UPDATE Language SET NewId = (SELECT Id from [Insite.Commerce.TargetDB].dbo.Language nl WHERE nl.LanguageCode = Language.LanguageCode)
   UPDATE Language SET NewId = (SELECT Id from [Insite.Commerce.TargetDB].dbo.Language nl where nl.IsDefault = 1) WHERE Language.NewId IS NULL
   UPDATE UserProfile SET NewId = (SELECT Id from [Insite.Commerce.TargetDB].dbo.UserProfile nup WHERE nup.Id = UserProfile.Id)
   UPDATE UserProfile SET NewId = (SELECT Id from [Insite.Commerce.TargetDB].dbo.UserProfile nup WHERE nup.UserName = UserProfile.UserName) WHERE UserProfile.NewId IS NULL
   INSERT INTO [Insite.Commerce.TargetDB].dbo.UserProfile (Id, FirstName,LastName,Phone,UserName,IsGuest,IsDeactivated)
   (SELECT Id, FirstName,LastName,Phone,UserName,IsGuest, 1 FROM UserProfile WHERE NewId IS NULL)
   UPDATE UserProfile SET NewId = Id WHERE NewId IS NULL
   GO
   
   -- Copy IDs back into target tables
   UPDATE ContentPageState SET LanguageId = (SELECT NewId FROM Language WHERE Language.Id = ContentPageState.LanguageId)
   UPDATE ContentPageState SET PersonaId = (SELECT NewId FROM Persona WHERE Persona.Id = ContentPageState.PersonaId)
   UPDATE ContentItemField SET LanguageId = (SELECT NewId FROM Language WHERE Language.Id = ContentItemField.LanguageId)
   UPDATE ContentItemField SET PersonaId = (SELECT NewId FROM Persona WHERE Persona.Id = ContentItemField.PersonaId)
   UPDATE ContentItemField SET CreatedById = (SELECT NewId FROM UserProfile WHERE UserProfile.Id = ContentItemField.CreatedById)
   UPDATE ContentItemField SET ApprovedById = (SELECT NewId FROM UserProfile WHERE UserProfile.Id = ContentItemField.ApprovedById)
   UPDATE ContentItem SET CreatedById = (SELECT NewId FROM UserProfile WHERE UserProfile.Id = ContentItem.CreatedById)
   UPDATE ContentItem SET ApprovedById = (SELECT NewId FROM UserProfile WHERE UserProfile.Id = ContentItem.ApprovedById)
   GO
   
   -- Reform transfer files to original mode
   UPDATE Language SET Id = NewId
   UPDATE Persona SET Id = NewId
   UPDATE UserProfile SET Id = NewId
   ALTER TABLE Language DROP COLUMN NewId	
   ALTER TABLE Persona DROP COLUMN NewId
   ALTER TABLE UserProfile DROP COLUMN NewId
   GO
   
   -- Script to repopulate the data
   USE [Insite.Commerce.TargetDb]
   DELETE FROM ContentPageState
   DELETE FROM ContentItemField
   DELETE FROM ContentItem
   INSERT into ContentItem SELECT * FROM [ContentTransfer].dbo.ContentItem
   INSERT INTO ContentItemField SELECT * FROM [ContentTransfer].dbo.ContentItemField
   INSERT INTO ContentPageState SELECT * FROM [ContentTransfer].dbo.ContentPageState
   GO
   
   COMMIT TRANSACTION