Versions and CMA
This topic addresses two separate version related topics with respect to using CMA between two environments.
• Different versions of the application
• Different CMA file format versions
Different Versions of the Product
CMA was developed with the main requirement of copying data between two environments that are on the same version of the product. For example, copying configuration data from a development environment to a test environment on the same product verison.
In general, CMA tries its best to support importing files that were exported from a different version of the product.
• For objects whose structure and rules have not changed between the two versions, there should be no issues.
• For objects that have changed between the two versions, there are scenarios that may cause additional steps.
◦ If the target environment is a later version and includes a new optional column on an object that was not present in the source, the import should go through without any issues.
◦ If the target environment is a later version and includes a new required column on an object that was not present in the source, a 'pre-compare' algorithm could be used to populate the new required value. Your implementation can provide this algorithm to populate the data according to your business rules.
◦ If the target environment is an earlier version than the source, it's expected to work, but we cannot guarantee that there won't be specific issues encountered with specific objects.
File Format Version
When creating the export file, the format of the file is specific and the CMA import step knows how to read the file. It is rare, but there are times when the product makes an enhancement to CMA that requires a change in the structure of the export file at which point the 'version' of the CMA file is incremented.
The CMA file format version has no impact to migrations that are exported and then imported into the same version of Oracle Utilities Application Framework. However, if your implementation has different environments on different versions of the product where the CMA file format is also different, then the system has functionality to cater for these differences.
• If you are exporting data from a lower file format version to a higher file format version, there is nothing special that you need to do. The export step captures the file format version and the import step reads this information and processes the file accordingly.
• If you are exporting data from a higher file format version and the product currenly supports exporting to a lower file format version, at export time you are prompted for the earlier file format version. You may indicate the you want the earlier file format version when creating the migration data export.
Note:
The product supports exporting to an earlier file format version for a reasonable amount of time, but not in perpetuity.