dada3_to_dada4_sql.pl - Required SQL Migration Utility

Dada Mail 3 to Dada Mail 4 Migration Utility

Description

The SQL table schema between Dada Mail 3.0 and Dada Mail 4.0 has changed.

Information Saved Differently

Profile Subscriber Fields that were once saved in the, dada_subscribers table now are saved in a few different tables: dada_profiles and dada_profile_fields.

Attributes of the fields themselves, mostly the, "fallback" value, was saved in the list settings (for some bizarre reason). This information is now saved in the, ,dada_profile_fields_attributes table.

Table Schema Datatypes

Many table column data types have changed, to better work with UTF-8/unicode encoding

Character Set/Encoding Changes

Some tables now need to have a character set of, utf-8

This utility creates any missing tables, moves the old Profile Subscriber Fields information to the new tables and removes the old information.

REQUIREMENTS

This utility should only be used when upgrading Dada Mail to version 4, from version 3, or version 2 of Dada Mail.

This utility should also, only be used if you're using the SQL Backend. If you are not using the SQL Backend, you would not need this utility.

INSTALLATION

Upgrade your Dada Mail installation to 4 before attempting to use this utility.

This utility is located in the Dada Mail distribution, in:

 dada/extras/scripts/dada3_to_dada4_sql.pl

You'll most likely want to move it to the, dada directory.

Change it's persmissions to, 0755 and visit the script in your web browser.

This script relies on the SQL schemas that are saved in the,

 dada/extras/SQL

directory to be present. Make sure this directory has been uploaded to your installation!

No other configuration is needed.

From there, migration should be straightforward. Follow the directions in your browser window.

Once the migration is complete, please REMOVE this utility from your hosting account.

A BIG WARNING ABOUT THIS MIGRATION TOOL AND LOST/CORRUPTED INFORMATION

We don't want you to lose information that's valuable to you.

Please read this entire section, to understand what's going to happen.

A major major huge change between Dada Mail 3.0 and 4.0 is that Subscriber Profile Fields information that used to be different per subscriber, per list is now shared between lists.

What this means is that, if you have a subscriber and there's a few fields, let's say, fist_name, last_name, favorite_color, these three fields will show up for ALL lists (as it had, before), BUT! The information for each list will also be the same. In Dada Mail 3.0, it COULD potentially, be different.

When you use this migration tool, only ONE version of this information will be moved over. It's up to the migration tool to decide what information gets pulled over. If you're worried about losing information you want to save, and only keeping information you want, it's suggested (kind of) to not use this migration tool, until you've manually changed the subscriber profile fields information to the information you'd like. How to do that? Good question, really. You'd probably have to change (manually) all the profile fields information for each subscriber, in each subscription to the version of the information you want.

In the real world, we're not sure how much of a problem this is going to be since, the subscriber has to be subscribed to more than one list to first, be impacted by the problem and then, the subscriber has to have different information per list to first lose information from the migration. If the information is like what we've used as an example (fist_name, last_name, favorite_color,) the information is probably going to be shared, anyways, so no worries.

Dada Mail 4.0 also has the ability to allow your subscribers to change their own Subscription Profile Information, so if they don't like what's saved, they can manually update their own information.

If you have a subscription field that's unique to each subscriber, for each list, you're going to be out of luck. We don't have a good workaround for that.

This utility will also CHANGE the CHARACTER SET of some of the tables in the schema, to, utf8. If you were using Dada Mail and have non-Latin1 characters in your database, these characters will potentially be corrupted. If this is not something you want, please change convert and change the character set manually. The following tables need to be modified:


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