Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: Which distributions (distros) of Linux are recommended for GnuMed?

[Horst Herb]

On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 15:39, Karsten Hilbert wrote:
> > of the program that may interact. One would hate for example to lose or
> > corrupt useful data (even if it is test data) on account of something
> > being updated.
>
> You are fully correct and unfortunately I don't see the way to
> go forward with this yet especially regarding schema changes.
> I have migrated - manually - GnuMed databases before but this
> is one thing we should absolutely eventually use a robust
> mechanism for that doesn't need manual fixing each and every
> time.

I have proposed it in the past, and I propose it herewith again:

1.) we agree on a "baseline" database version (SQL scripts) = 1.0
2.) ALL changes to the database from 1.0 onwards are solely extensions to that 
1.0 script ("diff scripts"), and will not break backwards compatibility nor 
alter any existing data
(example: allowed are "create table", "update table" (only for adding / 
extending rows or constraints or defaults), "create index", "grant" ... but 
never things like "drop table".
All extensions to 1.0 are numbered with consecutive numbers behind the decimal 
point (e.g. 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 ...)
3.) a gnumed_db_update script fetches all diff scripts from gnumed.net and 
installs them.

That takes the pain out of testing user interfaces with our rapidly evolving 
backend and allows preserving data without risks.

Horst