managing changes to ezpublish database

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EZ CONFERENCE 2016PARIS

Managing Changes to the Database Across the Project Life Cycle

WHO AM IThe short version

• « the guy who has written a lot of answers on the eZPublish forums »

• Working at Kaliop in London since 2014

• Principal consultant at eZ Systems for 7 years

• Love coffee and bicycles ?

• @gggeek

VOTRE SCHEMA

WHAT THIS TALK IS ABOUTThe short version, too

Database vs. cms vs. the project lifecycle

01

Project life cycle

• Development

• Testing

• Maintenance

Development phase

• Only one source of data: the “dev” db

• Size of data set is generally small

• Changes to content structure are frequent

• Developers need to share the database (mostly the structure)

Testing phase

• Two sources of data: the “dev” and “test” db

• Size of data set can be small or not

• Changes to content structure are less frequent

• Developers need to share the dev database

• Controlled releases of changes from dev to test

• The bulk of test “content” is not overwritten

Maintenance phase

• 3 (or more) sources of data: the “dev”, “test” and “prod” db

• Size of data set can be large

• Changes to content structure are infrequent

• Few developers need to share the dev database

• Controlled releases of changes

• Content might flow the opposite way thanchanges to structure:

“copy prod to test”

What we learned

• Different needs during different phases of the project

• Changes to Content and to Content-structure have different flows

What the CMS brings in

• Content structure can be modified via the GUI!

• Many tables, with many relations

• No foreign keys

(import scripts can break referential integrity)

• Some data is tied to files stored on disk (take care when

doing backups!)

• Impossible to replicate / sync single tables

Is it all for the better?

• Easy to deploy changes to Content Structure after go live

Unless the changes takes hours to apply

Will never cover 100% of the cases

• Hard to automate

• Hard to verify

Managing database changes

A. I connect to the Admin Interface

B.A solved problem02

Keeping Databases in sync

Many possibilities:

A. All developers connect to the same db

B. Managing changes manually

C. The database is committed to git

D. Managing changes via scripts

E. Live DB replication (really ???)

F. More ?

A single, shared database

A

Connecting to a shared database

• good for teams which are *not* geographically distributed

• works when developers do not blow up the database with junk content: needs some developer discipline

• works only up to the 1st deployment to TEST env; then 2 dbs have to be managed anyway

Manual change control

B

Managing database changes manually

• Changes to be applied are documented and applied via GUI

• Most Unsafe Option (TM)

• Some tools to help you to keep mental sanity:

ggsysinfo

ezdbintegrity

ggsysinfohttps://github.com/gggeek/ggsysinfo

• Legacy Extension (no eZPlatform version yet)

• Allows to export in a format easy to diff:

Content Types definitions

Roles and Policies definitions

Workflows and Triggers

ggsysinfohttps://github.com/gggeek/ggsysinfo

ggsysinfohttps://github.com/gggeek/ggsysinfo

ggsysinfohttps://github.com/gggeek/ggsysinfo

ezdbintegrityhttps://github.com/gggeek/ezdbintegrity

• Legacy Extension (no eZPlatform version yet)

• Allows to verify consistency of data in the database:

Foreign keys

Content fields

Orphaned storage files

Custom rules added by the end user

• No GUI

ezdbintegrityhttps://github.com/gggeek/ezdbintegrity

ezdbintegrityhttps://github.com/gggeek/ezdbintegrity

Database as source code

C

Committing the database to git

• good for when the development database does not contain a huge number of contents and assets

• good for when the development database does not change too frequently

• developers might be working on different versions of the db: needs some developer discipline

• works only up to the 1st deployment to UAT env; then 2 dbs have to be managed anyway

Committing the database to gitTIPS

• Database export/import scripts have to developed

• Good idea: remove temporary data before export

• Bad idea: hardcode database passwords in the scripts

• Good idea: read the db passwords from the ezpublish configuration

“Kaliop eZPublish 5 installer”

• Good idea: have the script manage binary contents & clear caches

ex: github.com/kaliop-uk/websummercamp2016/tree/master/site/bin

Automated change control

D

Managing database changes via script

• Safest option

• Good for when the development database does not change too frequently

• Perfect after deployment to TEST/PROD

• kaliop/ezmigrationbundle

eZ Migration Bundlehttps://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

• An eZPublish 5 bundle (no support for pure Legacy mode)

• Allows to define “migrations”

• Each migration is a set of changes to the DB – content or structure

• Migrations are stored as part of the application source code

• A console command is used to execute them

• A custom table in the db stored information on already executed ones

An example migrationhttps://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

What types of migrations are supportedhttps://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

• creation, update and deletion of Contents• creation, update and deletion of Locations• creation, update and deletion of Users• creation, update and deletion of UserGroups• creation, update and deletion of Roles• creation, update and deletion of ContentTypes• creation and deletion of Languages• creation of Tags (from the Netgen Tags Bundle)

Cool features Ihttps://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

• Well documented (*)

• Stable: functional tests are run on Travis

• Future proof: based on the eZPublish Public API

* = opinions may vary

Cool features IIhttps://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

• Supports ids, identifiers and remote-ids to match elements

• Supports the concept of ‘references’ to anything which has just been created/updated

• Update and delete operations can affect a whole set of elements in a single pass

Cool features IIIhttps://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

For more complex needs, two types of custom migrations:

• SQL files

• PHP classes with a simple Interface

Fully extensible using standard Symfony mechanisms

• Event listeners

• Tagged services

• Service definition takeover

Demo time

03

Going forward

04

Version 3 released today!https://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

If the demo effect does not strike now…

Is your favourite feature missing?https://github.com/kalipo-uk/ezmigrationbundle

The first brick is laid, many scenarios are possible

ex: allow a full ETL process / migrate across eZ installations

Feature requests and Bugs are managed on Github

Pull Requests are welcome

(thanks Lolautruche!)

THANK YOU

@gggeek

https://github.com/kaliop-uk

https://github.com/kaliop

http://www.kaliop.co.uk/info/ez.html