The most common EnterWorks system configurations consist of three separate environments: Development (DEV), Quality Assurance (QA), and Production (PROD). The data model is developed in the DEV environment, tested in the QA environment, and put into production in the PROD environment. The migration feature is designed to facilitate the transfer of data model and configuration components from DEV to QA, and ultimately to PROD.
Some of the EnterWorks components that can be migrated are:
- Users and user groups
- Data sources
- Security filters
- Transmission options
- File definitions
- Home page configuration
- Server Properties
- Data model objects such as Repositories, Code Sets, and Profiles
Some reasons you may want to migrate components include changes to:
- Code set definitions
- Attributes: Changes such as adding or removing an attribute or changing an attribute's data type, size, default value, sort order, group assignment, or tab assignment.
- Hierarchies or taxonomies: Changes such as adding taxonomy nodes.
- Snapshot tables:. Changes such as adding attributes or enabling multi-language support.
- Custom actions
- Triggers or Promotion properties
Each component has an underlying unique identifier assigned to it, which ensures the correct migration of components even if their names have been changed. For example, there could be an attribute named "User Desc" in the DEV environment that is migrated to QA and PROD as "User Desc". Then later the attribute name is changed to "User Description". A second migration of the profile containing this attribute would successfully locate the "User Desc" attribute in the QA and PROD environments and update its name to be "User Description".