database to dcr ?

Hi,

I have a project to port a web site from Cold Fusion to J2EE. The Cold Fusion implementation
has a home grown Content Management application that provides screens for users to input
content for pages. It stores the content in MS Access databases, and then generates HTML
pages from the database. It is completly offline from the web site.

Part of the migration project is to develop templates to replace the home grown Content Mgt app.
Does anyone know of a way to migrate the data to DCRs from the database ? I can export the
data to flatfiles if needed.

I'm using TeamSite and Templating 5.5.2.

Brad Pridgeon

Brad Pridgeon

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Comments

jbonifaci

Just write a script to read the data from the database and output the xml for the DCRs. It should be fairly simple and straight forward as long as you are familiar with xml and the database in question.

~Jeff

akshathp

Also, once the record from database is pulled and converted into XML format into a DCR file, you will need to apply TeamSite Extended Attributes (EA) to the generated DCR. Once EAs are set, TeamSite will recognize the DCR as a templatized file to open via UI.

Akshat Pramod Sharma

bradp

Does anyone have any practical experience in doing this and can advise of potential pitfalls ?

Brad Pridgeon

jbonifaci

I have done this many times, there are no real pitfalls other than ensuring you set the data type extended attribute as someone else posted above. Assuming you create valid xml for your DCRs, there shouldn't be any issues with doing this. Unless there is something unique about your current business process that would create an issue.

~Jeff

bradp

The only thing that concerns me is that the database is not a very good design, and I would
have to join the data in several ways to produce DCRs that are good representations of the
pages.

Brad Pridgeon

jbonifaci

Well, you're going to have to extract the data from the database somehow, it isn't just going to get into a better format on it's own. You'll have to write a select with many joins and/or do a series of selects to get all of the information about each record to create the DCRs. If you have no need for replicants, you should be able to do it in one select. If you have replicants, you'll likely want to get the main information in one select and then use separate selects for the replicant information.

~Jeff