Executive summary for DB updates in setup

1 Description

DB updates should show some kind of "executive summary", ie. at least a short description of what they (will) do in the setup.
 
Particularly new indices to be created should be listet in detail (table and index names, columns to be indexed). That gives admins a chance to remove these in their own DB (if they were already created by hand in the past—which isn’t uncommon at least for larger ILIAS installations) prior to applying the update. (If a DB updates fails due to some kind of index update conflict the whole DB has to be restored from backup and the process has to be restarted.)

1.1 Implementation in 4.3

In the setup a new button "Show Update Steps" appears on the "Database" screen when an update or hotfix needs to be applied.

2 Status

3 Additional Information

4 Discussion

JF 21 Nov 2011: We discussed how this summary could be provided. It could be error-prone, if developers need to add additional comments to their steps that explain what these steps do. In fact complex db update steps (e.g. migrations from one data concept, into another) could be hard to be explained in a way feasible for administrators. A simple way to give the most important information you requested (about indixes) would be to provide a link that simply lists the update steps that will pe performed if the update is executed. Especially the addIndex commans are quite easy to read. An administrator then could realise, that it is not necessary to restore from backup, but to simply out-comment one step in the script and continue with the next one.
 
Would this simple solution fit your needs?

CB 21 Dec 2011: As we already dicussed personally, this will suffice, yes! :)

5 Implementation