Migrating records from the Sandbox
Changes to the ANDS Sandbox September 2011
From September 2011 ANDS will use a single environment, with a workflow to move records from draft status through to publication. Find out more
I have records in the Sandbox. What do I need to do?
You will need to work with your ANDS liaison officer to organise migration of your Sandbox records to the new system.
Your ANDS liaison officer will need to collect some information from you and pass it on to the ANDS technical team. No records will be migrated until after the new system's release, and no records will be migrated without your approval. Through your liaison officer, you will have complete control over the migration of your records.
The Sandbox will continue to exist as a legacy system following the release of the new system, but we would prefer that you migrate your records to the new system as soon as possible. We intend to decommission the Sandbox in November 2011. Once data has been migrated from the Sandbox it will be removed, and you should manage your records via the new system.
Data that is currently in Sandbox will not be published and viewable in Research Data Australia immediately after it is migrated, but will have a status of either Draft or Submitted for Assessment depending on the Sandbox status of the data at the time of migration. More information about statuses
The information below will remain accessible here for reference until the Sandbox is decommissioned. ANDS Partners should contact their Client Liaison Officer to discuss migrating their records out of the Sandbox.
Development of metadata records commonly occurs in the ANDS Sandbox environment. There is no automated method for migrating content from the Sandbox into the production environment.
Prerequisites
Before you can move these records to production, the following steps need to be completed:
- Check the accuracy and correctness of your records by referring to the Quickstart Guides to Describing collections and Describing parties, the Content Providers Guide, and the Metadata content requirements. It will also be useful to examine records that are already in production and visible in Research Data Australia.
- ANDS approval to move your records to production. Your ANDS contact will guide you through this iterative feedback and improvement process.
- An AAF authentication for your Data Source Administrator More information
- Creation of a Data Source Account in the production environment More information
The ANDS contact assigned to your institution should be the first point of contact for queries regarding the Sandbox, Research Data Australia, and the migration of records into production. You can also use the ANDS services email: services@ands.org.au
Migration
Once your Sandbox records have been approved, it is time to migrate them to the production ANDS Collections Registry. From there, your records will be visible in Research Data Australia.
For technical reasons, automated migration is not possible at present. Your migration strategy depends on whether your records can be harvested or not.
Harvestable records
In most cases, the Sandbox is used to develop sample records and to establish successful test harvests.
Once this has occurred and the other pre-requisites listed above are met, it is a simple matter to begin harvesting of those records from within the Production environment instead of the Sandbox environment. More information about harvesting
If the records to be harvested are not stored at the Data Source and only exist within the Sandbox for some reason, you can use ANDS Web Services, such as the Get Registry Objects service, to extract the records you wish to harvest into production. Detailed instructions are available from the ANDS Web Services page.
Another option is the Data Source Export Tool provided in the Sandbox environment. This tool allows you to export RIF-CS from a data source in the Sandbox to your local machine.
Non-harvestable records
If your records exist only in the Sandbox and you are not intending to use harvesting in production, you need first to remove your records from the Sandbox and then import them into Production.
To remove your records from the Sandbox
Option 1
Use ANDS Web Services as described above to extract your records from the Sandbox.
Option 2
Use the Data Source Export Tool as described above to extract your records from the Sandbox.
Option 3
- Navigate to each Sandbox record to its XML format, then Right click to use your browser’s 'view source' or 'view page source' option to display clean XML without display information. If this step is missed the XML will contain unnecessary characters that will prevent the XML being accepted into the ANDS Collections Registry.
- Export the RIF-CS XML from each collection record and save as a .txt or .xml file.
- Locate these files at a publicly accessible url.
To import your records into Production
Option 1
Manually re-enter your records using the Registry My Data manual interface (not recommended due to labour costs, data entry errors and the risk of accidental deletion of the records by the Data Source Administrator, which would require the same process to be repeated).
Option 2
Import the records from within your Production environment Data Source Account.
To do this, configure the account as follows:
- Harvest location: the url where your files are located
- Provider type: RIF
- Harvest method: Direct
Save these settings and then select the 'Import' button at the bottom of the page. This should import your records immediately.
| Date | Change history |
| 26 October 2010 | First web publication |
| 30 Sept 2011 | Added information about new integrated production environment |
Please send any feedback on this page to guides@ands.org.au
