About Importing and Exporting

The tools jawsExport and jawsImport are command-line tools for migrating definitional data from one instance of Automation Analytics & Intelligence to another.

The process of capturing definitional data from an AAI server is called an export. The process of inserting definitional data into an AAI server is called an import.

The AAI server from which the data is being exported is called the source. The AAI server into which the data is being imported is called the target. The diagram below shows the high-level picture of the migration process.

Import/export tools can be used against two distinct AAI servers, or against one that is being upgraded. They can also be used in a distributed fashion.

For example, the Source and Target AAI servers may reside on separate hosts, jawsExport and jawsImport tools may be invoked from different machines, and the data export file may be located on another computer accessible via file system mounts. The Source and Target AAI servers must be running the same version of Automation Analytics & Intelligence.

Real life scenarios will likely have multiple components hosted on the same computer, as illustrated below.

The migration can be run in its entirety or in phases. For instance, the export can be run at one time, then a number of configuration steps can be performed on the target machine, and then the import can be run. Whether the migration is done in one step or in multiple steps depends on the environment and specifics of a particular installation. If a single machine is being upgraded, it is likely to be a multi-step process. If the migration is from one machine to another, it is possible to run all data migration steps in succession.

In order to run successfully, the jawsExport and jawsImport tools need to be able to connect to the source and target AAI servers. Import/export connects to the AAI servers the same way the AAI client UI does. If the AAI client is capable of connecting to the AAI server from a particular machine, it should also be possible for jawsExport and jawsImport to reach the AAI server from that machine.

The target AAI system needs to have the same visibility to the scheduler as the source AAI system in order to access and populate the run data. Please note that the data migration does not include job run data in the XML document, but instead loads it directly from the scheduler. Additionally, if any of the scheduler definitions contains archive files, the target AAI server needs to have visibility to them. If local paths are used for the archive files on the source machine, the archive files will also have to reside in the same location on the target AAI server in order to get loaded. Conversely, if archive file references are external, visibility and access to them have to exist on the target machine to ensure proper loading.

The data migration export file is an XML document. It is possible to manipulate the XML export file in an editor; however, Automation Analytics & Intelligence strongly discourages doing so. The jawsImport tool performs XML file validation to ensure that no errors were introduced through editing.