is there an undo/rollback for spread sheet data import during workflows

[Simon Opper]

Hi there

I'm importing data from a spreadsheet into a taxonomy and I'm using workflows for import steps.

If I start a workflow and then complete a spreadsheet import, how can I 'undo' the import within the workflow, but keep the existing workflow 'active'/'open'. Can an import be rolled back or undone ? At the moment the only way I've found to 'undo' the import is to cancel the entire workflow which then deletes the workflow. Sure, this is the purpose of workflows I guess and this works if a new workflow is used only for the import and no other commits. But this seems a little limited. I often want to redo the import after making some changes to import properties for example, but wish to have one or two related steps within the workflow after the import that I want to keep the same. Plus a small hassle - I dont want to have to delete the workflow and re enter it's name and its description each time.

Side note - I guess my use case makes importing particularly intensive as I'm importing recursively and it takes a bit of iteration to get it working at each step. It would be fantastic to be able to control recursion somehow when importing a sheet. I know some of this recursion can be done if the sheet is re formatted as column based trees. But this is a) a bit onerous with a sheet with many columns (requiring a lot of excel jiggery pokery to format it), and b) won't facilitate more complicated re-cursive imports - e.g. convoluted nesting or relationships.

Seems like it needs a process like TBCME uses for xml with xsd e.g. import excel sheet -> create or add a sheet schema -> ingest sheet using schema to recusrively add elements and property values. Looks like you can add an xml schema to an excel workbook, then export the xml. But can it be done all within TQ stack? If you have any hot tips to help here I'd be most interested.

Cheers

Simon

[Holger Knublauch]

Hi Simon,

On 15/01/2020 22:03, Simon Opper wrote:
> Hi there
>
> I'm importing data from a spreadsheet into a taxonomy and I'm using workflows for import steps.
>
> If I start a workflow and then complete a spreadsheet import, how can I 'undo' the import within the workflow, but keep the existing workflow 'active'/'open'. Can an import be rolled back or undone ? At the moment the only way I've found to 'undo' the import is to cancel the entire workflow which then deletes the workflow. Sure, this is the purpose of workflows I guess and this works if a new workflow is used only for the import and no other commits. But this seems a little limited. I often want to redo the import after making some changes to import properties for example, but wish to have one or two related steps within the workflow after the import that I want to keep the same. Plus a small hassle - I dont want to have to delete the workflow and re enter it's name and its description each time.

Spreadsheet import to a workflow produces a change history entry that
can be undone in the Change History panel (6.3 onwards) or the Report >
View Change History page (in older versions).

>
> Side note - I guess my use case makes importing particularly intensive as I'm importing recursively and it takes a bit of iteration to get it working at each step. It would be fantastic to be able to control recursion somehow when importing a sheet. I know some of this recursion can be done if the sheet is re formatted as column based trees. But this is a) a bit onerous with a sheet with many columns (requiring a lot of excel jiggery pokery to format it), and b) won't facilitate more complicated re-cursive imports - e.g. convoluted nesting or relationships.
>
> Seems like it needs a process like TBCME uses for xml with xsd e.g. import excel sheet -> create or add a sheet schema -> ingest sheet using schema to recusrively add elements and property values. Looks like you can add an xml schema to an excel workbook, then export the xml. But can it be done all within TQ stack? If you have any hot tips to help here I'd be most interested.

XML Schema on Excel is not something we could support well. So I am
afraid the only alternatives are to pre-process your data outside of
TopBraid or write some script within TopBraid, for example using SWP.
The spreadsheet importer produces SPIN rules, and you can save those
rules and later batch-process them. However this requires some
experience and fiddling to get right, so I would only recommend that if
you really need to re-run the same processes over and over again.

Holger