Database Upgrades

If you are moving from an older version of Sakai to a new version of Sakai, you will need to make use of one or more migration SQL scripts, which must be run against your database after shutting down the existing version of Sakia and prior to starting the new version of Sakai.

These SQL scripts are included with the source distribution of Sakai (in the subdirectory reference/docs/conversion). The latest version can also be found here:

https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn//reference/trunk/docs/conversion/

The SQL scripts are named according to the database technology (oracle or mysql), the version of Sakai from which the migration starts, and the version of Sakai with which the migration ends. For example, the migration script to update a MySQL database associated with a Sakai 2.3.1 to work with Sakai 2.4.0 is named sakai_2_3_1-2_4_0_mysql_conversion.sql.

If you are migrating through a number of minor revisions, you will want to plan and test a route of intervening conversion steps in sequence. For example, if you were updating an Oracle instance associated with Sakai 2.2.0 to work with Sakai 2.4.0, you would execute the sql statements found in each of these files in order:

sakai_2_2_0-2_2_1_oracle_conversion.sql
sakai_2_2_1-2_3_1_oracle_conversion.sql
sakai_2_3_1-2_4_0_oracle_conversion.sql

In this example, there is also a conversion script to move from 2.3.0 to 2.3.1, which is not needed, as the changes required are covered when updating from 2.2.1 to 2.3.1.

As with any major changes to your Sakai installation, the database migration should be tested using a restored copy of your live data on a separate server. You should only update your live server once you have tested the migrated data to your satisfaction and once you are confident in your disaster recovery methods.