Apply configurations to other databases

Solution design involves moving of configuration you have done in a solution environment to test and production environments. In addition, you need to update your database with up-to-date production data regularly to ensure that your configuration is working with the amount of data users are working with in the production environment.

In the Alfabet database, the configuration is stored separated from the data entered by users on the Alfabet user interface and uploaded documents:

 Graphic of the Alfabet database divided in data store, document store, and configuration store

Configuration data includes all configuration objects available via Alfabet Expand. the configuration store is divided in private standard configuration and public customer configuration.

Object data is all data stored for instances of object classes of the Alfabet meta-model. Your configuration may also include object data, for example for the definition of evaluation and indicator types, external links, data action rules, or data quality rules.

Configured reports and user profiles are stored in both the configuration store and the object data store. Administrative users can define user profiles and configured reports on the user interface and solution designers can define them in Alfabet Expand. For configured report, you can only define a subset of simple reports on the user interface. Advanced reporting capabilities are only available in Alfabet Expand.

There are two mechanisms for moving configuration from one environment to the other:

• AMM files: Alfabet meta-model update files stores configuration objects of the configuration store as well as a subset of the object data relevant for configuration. You can store the configuration of a source database either completely or partially in an AMM file. You can then update or overwrite the configuration in a target database with the configuration stored in the AMM file.
• ADBZ files: An Alfabet database archive file stores the complete content of the Alfabet database including documents, object data, and configuration. You can use ADBZ files, for example, to store the content of a production database and implement it in a configuration or test environment. ADBZ files can also be generated with anonymized data. You can use anonymized archiving to send data to support for analysis without sending sensible data.

  Do not use ADBZ files for regular backups of the Alfabet database. Bizzdesign BV does not take over responsibility for the integrity of data stored in ADBZ files. These files are for use in solution configuration and test environments and data transmission to support only.

In the workflow of solution configuration, you are creating AMM files with your custom configuration after completion of the configuration task. This file will then be used to merge the new configuration to the configuration of the test environments and production environments.

You can use ADBZ files to overwrite the database used for testing with current data from the production environment. Working on an up-to-date database is crucial to avoid, for example, performance issues for a new configuration. Your configuration should always be optimized for the current data load in your company's production database.

During configuration, you can mark all configuration objects you are changing in Alfabet Expand with a tag. You can then build an AMM file including the tagged configuration only. With this, you can work on different configurations in parallel and send one finished configuration to testing or production without merging the other, half-finished configurations to the testing or production environment.