Best practice - how to divide the database in several parts

[Bart Eenkhoorn]

Dear flex experts,

I would like to extract a chunk of entries and keep those in a separate fwdata database in case they are ever needed. I would like to export just the ones that match the filter and keep some non-lift features like audio in that export. What export format do you propose I use? After the extraction these entries will be deleted from the main database.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Bart.

Bart Eenkhoorn Linguist / Facilitateur SIL Afrique de l’Ouest

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[Bart Eenkhoorn]

After some experimenting, I came up with the following workflow.

1. Backup up the project

2. Restore the project (here I am not sure what kind of restore is best)

3. Filter for all but the one GrammaticalCategory I want to keep 

4. with bulkdelete delete all those entries

5. The remaining project is still a descendant of the original backup, so the internal GUIDs still match. In theory with a SEND RECEIVE these entries could be added to the master database if ever needed.

My question is how to restore the backup while creating a 2nd copy and maintaining a GUID relationship that will allow for SEND RECEIVE.

Would you recommend this workflow?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Bart

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[Jeff Heath]

Ummm... if you delete all of those entries, I'm pretty sure you don't want to use a regular S/R, as that would post those deletions to the main project. There may be some clever people out there (Ken Z comes to mind...) who could merge those entries back into your main database, or a FlexTools script might be able do it, but I think a regular S/R would produce sadness.

[Christopher Hirt]

On Tuesday, June 3, 2025 at 11:33:35 AM UTC-4 Bart Eenkhoorn wrote:

My question is how to restore the backup while creating a 2nd copy and maintaining a GUID relationship that will allow for SEND RECEIVE.

I think backing up the project is probably the best way to keep everything intact for the entries you want to "archive".  You should know that doing a project management -> backup this project does not preserve the underlying send/receive repository, and therefore there is no automatic S/R way to merge the backup db with the main db.  LIFT or SFM import/export are what FieldWorks provides, and I don't know if those satisfy your requirements of keeping all media/data intact, as you are wanting.  As Jeff mentioned, it could be done by hand or through a custom script via FlexTools.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Ken Zook]

A challenge when deleting entries in FLEx S/R is that anyone who intentionally (or accidently) makes a change to any of the entries you want to delete during the same S/R cycle, will cancel the deletion of those entries. To avoid this, have everyone do a S/R and stop working. Do S/R to get everyone’s changes. Make your deletions, S/R, then have your colleagues all do S/R and continue working.

 

Here’s one approach that will remove entries from everyone’s projects, but keeps a copy that you could restore later on. Keep in mind that there are various potential problems with this. When you delete an entry any links from other entries to the deleted entries will be gone, and will not be restored if you restore the deleted entries. This includes links for variants, complex forms, reversal entries, cross references, lexical relations, interlinear texts, etc.

 

1. Backup your active FLEx project
2. Make the deletions you no longer want in the ongoing project.
3. S/R which will delete those entries from colleagues’ machines.
4. Restore the backup to a different name (e.g., Saved). This will be the backup of the deleted entries.
5. In the Saved file, delete all of the entries except the deleted ones you want to keep.
6. Probably make a FLEx backup of this Saved project.

 

To restore the saved entries,

7. In the Saved project, export all (or a desired subset) of the entries to a LIFT file.
8. Import the LIFT file into your main project.

 

In theory, I think this will work. Step 5 should delete all of the links from the deleted entries, so that when you restore, it will not have any links to original entries that are no longer in the current project.

 

Ken

 

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