1 About Export/Import Tool

This chapter provides an overview of the Agile RMW Import/Export tool.

1.1 Overview

Export and import operations are accomplished in two ways:

rom the Recipe & Material Workspace user interface (UI), or
Using Windows or Unix command-line interface (CLI); working in a CLI, the Export/Import utility is called "ExIm".

Using the RMW UI or ExIm, you can perform the following operations:

Export information from an RMW development, test, or staging environment and import information to an RMW production environment from the UI.
Export or import information from the RMW application independent of the installation platform: the export / import procedures can be executed from a client system on any supported platform, using ExIm.

For information about supported platforms for Agile PLM, see the Agile PLM Capacity Planning Guide.

Import information in insert, update, delete, or replace mode using ExIm.

The export or import operation is a console-based operation. The export operation connects to the RMW application and makes a request for the data to be exported. The application server retrieves the requested data from the application's database.

The export operation creates an XML file (cfmXML) with exported information at a location that you can specify.

The information that is exported or imported includes metadata and related data present in the application for the exported business object.

The import operation uses the exported information and updates the RMW application.

The output of an export operation is an XML file that contains the information you exported. The import operation uses this XML file to perform the user-specified import operations like insert, update, or delete.

1.1.1 RMW Administrator Objects

In addition to RMW business objects, you can export RMW Administrator objects, such as Users, Sites, Views, Roles, Alerts, Workflows, and other Administrator objects.

1.2 Assumptions and Constraints

Here are some assumptions and constraints about the ExIm tool.

If primary key (PK) is capable of automatic sequencing (autosequence), the autosequence in the target database for that PK is disabled by the import program and is enabled after the import operation is completed. The disabling or enabling of PKs are done in memory and no changes are made in the database.
Import and Update operations are not supported for Categories without a Primary Key. Attempting an import or update on Categories without a PK will result in an error.
When migrating data that has autosequence attributes, the sequence number for the exported attribute is extracted from the source database and updated in the target database, as long as the autosequence value in the target database is less than that value in the source database.

For example, if the autosequence value for a record is 10 and this record is exported to a database in which the highest autosequence value is 5, the autosequence value in the destination database is reset to 10.

If a field is autosequence and is "non-PK", no validations are done against this field in the target database, and the value will be inserted "as is".
The autosequence value generation patterns in the source and target database have to be the same for the PK autosequence attributes. If they are not the same, the import will be aborted.

For example, in the source database, if the pattern values for generating the autosequence is EQP_<000> where <000> represents a three-digit number, the target database should have the same pattern: EQP_<000>.

A user can run more than one instance of the import program. If same autosequence attribute is being inserted by multiple instances of the import program, only the first import will succeed and others will be aborted.
Importing data is not possible when the target object definition does not match the source object definition, for example, if the target category definition has a different number of columns than the source category definition.
The Pick List has been removed from the Properties file. So, to export Pick List values, provide the database value rather than the value showing in the UI. That is, if a user creates a criteria containing List values as a selection, the db List value name must be provided, instead of the label for searching.