Backing up data
I have been in the relational database world for decades. One of the things that is super simple is backing up and restoring data.
Sometimes, it makes it makes sense to pull the production data into development. In the case of a catastrophe, it’s super simple to restore data from a backup.
I am thinking of backup strategies for my data once again, and am wondering if things have changed since I was last using smalltalk.
I am thinking of the following:
STON
I could dump all of my data into STON, but there is one slight twist. In this project, it’s just making a list of movie listings. There are three basic classes: Theater, Movie, Event. Each of these classes stores an OrderedCollection of items of that type on a class variable, as I’ll need to access each on their own.. so, if an event has a theater, I’ll need to access Theaters on their own, and Movies on their own.
So, I would have to rebuild the list of Theaters from the Theaters in each event. Otherwise, I would lose the link between the Theaters on the Theater class variable and the Theater in the Event instance.
Am I thinking about this incorrectly?
Gemstones
I am totally into the idea of using gemstones. Is there a backup and restore for objects here? do the relationships remain?
Voyage
This seems like a good solution, but I would rather stay in the smalltalk object store.
Ideas?
Thanks!
peace,
sergio
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Sergio,
If you are keeping data in a Pharo image then you could just save the image instead of using STON. Alternatively, you could model your data in an Application class with three instance variables: theaters, movies, and events. Then you could dump the root application object and STON should preserve the relationships (I expect). I prefer this model since it allows me to create a test object that encapsulates all the data in one place (even if it is referenced from a class variable).
For GemStone, execute SystemRepository fullBackupGzCompressedTo: aFilePath (see details at https://downloads.gemtalksystems.com/docs/GemStone64/3.7.x/GS64-SysAdminGuide-3.7/11-BackupAndRestore.htm). This does a full object dump and preserves the relationship between objects. Note that GemStone also creates a transaction log so once a transaction commits, you can restore it in event of a system crash.
James Foster
On Jan 17, 2024, at 8:48 PM, sergio ruiz sergio.rrd@gmail.com wrote:
I have been in the relational database world for decades. One of the things that is super simple is backing up and restoring data.
Sometimes, it makes it makes sense to pull the production data into development. In the case of a catastrophe, it’s super simple to restore data from a backup.
I am thinking of backup strategies for my data once again, and am wondering if things have changed since I was last using smalltalk.
I am thinking of the following:
STON
I could dump all of my data into STON, but there is one slight twist. In this project, it’s just making a list of movie listings. There are three basic classes: Theater, Movie, Event. Each of these classes stores an OrderedCollection of items of that type on a class variable, as I’ll need to access each on their own.. so, if an event has a theater, I’ll need to access Theaters on their own, and Movies on their own.
So, I would have to rebuild the list of Theaters from the Theaters in each event. Otherwise, I would lose the link between the Theaters on the Theater class variable and the Theater in the Event instance.
Am I thinking about this incorrectly?
Gemstones
I am totally into the idea of using gemstones. Is there a backup and restore for objects here? do the relationships remain?
Voyage
This seems like a good solution, but I would rather stay in the smalltalk object store.
Ideas?
Thanks!
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV
@sergio_101@mastodon.social
https://sergio101.com
http://www.codeandmusic.com
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You want to look at Fuel, a serialization library.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 17, 2024, at 9:49 PM, sergio ruiz sergio.rrd@gmail.com wrote:
I have been in the relational database world for decades. One of the things that is super simple is backing up and restoring data.
Sometimes, it makes it makes sense to pull the production data into development. In the case of a catastrophe, it’s super simple to restore data from a backup.
I am thinking of backup strategies for my data once again, and am wondering if things have changed since I was last using smalltalk.
I am thinking of the following:
STON
I could dump all of my data into STON, but there is one slight twist. In this project, it’s just making a list of movie listings. There are three basic classes: Theater, Movie, Event. Each of these classes stores an OrderedCollection of items of that type on a class variable, as I’ll need to access each on their own.. so, if an event has a theater, I’ll need to access Theaters on their own, and Movies on their own.
So, I would have to rebuild the list of Theaters from the Theaters in each event. Otherwise, I would lose the link between the Theaters on the Theater class variable and the Theater in the Event instance.
Am I thinking about this incorrectly?
Gemstones
I am totally into the idea of using gemstones. Is there a backup and restore for objects here? do the relationships remain?
Voyage
This seems like a good solution, but I would rather stay in the smalltalk object store.
Ideas?
Thanks!
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV
@sergio_101@mastodon.social
https://sergio101.com
http://www.codeandmusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101
http://www.facebook.com/sergio101
+1 for Fuel, see here https://github.com/theseion/Fuel
CheersDavide
On Thursday, January 18, 2024 at 09:37:21 AM GMT+1, Todd Blanchard via Pharo-users <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> wrote:
You want to look at Fuel, a serialization library.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 17, 2024, at 9:49 PM, sergio ruiz sergio.rrd@gmail.com wrote:
I have been in the relational database world for decades. One of the things that is super simple is backing up and restoring data.
Sometimes, it makes it makes sense to pull the production data into development. In the case of a catastrophe, it’s super simple to restore data from a backup.
I am thinking of backup strategies for my data once again, and am wondering if things have changed since I was last using smalltalk.
I am thinking of the following:
STONI could dump all of my data into STON, but there is one slight twist. In this project, it’s just making a list of movie listings. There are three basic classes: Theater, Movie, Event. Each of these classes stores an OrderedCollection of items of that type on a class variable, as I’ll need to access each on their own.. so, if an event has a theater, I’ll need to access Theaters on their own, and Movies on their own.
So, I would have to rebuild the list of Theaters from the Theaters in each event. Otherwise, I would lose the link between the Theaters on the Theater class variable and the Theater in the Event instance.
Am I thinking about this incorrectly?
GemstonesI am totally into the idea of using gemstones. Is there a backup and restore for objects here? do the relationships remain?
VoyageThis seems like a good solution, but I would rather stay in the smalltalk object store.
Ideas?
Thanks!
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV@sergio_101@mastodon.socialhttps://sergio101.com
http://www.codeandmusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101
http://www.facebook.com/sergio101
I think it depends how many objects you have and what your consistency requirements are.
Am 18.01.2024 um 05:48 schrieb sergio ruiz sergio.rrd@gmail.com:
I have been in the relational database world for decades. One of the things that is super simple is backing up and restoring data.
Sometimes, it makes it makes sense to pull the production data into development. In the case of a catastrophe, it’s super simple to restore data from a backup.
I am thinking of backup strategies for my data once again, and am wondering if things have changed since I was last using smalltalk.
I am thinking of the following:
STON
I could dump all of my data into STON, but there is one slight twist. In this project, it’s just making a list of movie listings. There are three basic classes: Theater, Movie, Event. Each of these classes stores an OrderedCollection of items of that type on a class variable, as I’ll need to access each on their own.. so, if an event has a theater, I’ll need to access Theaters on their own, and Movies on their own.
So, I would have to rebuild the list of Theaters from the Theaters in each event. Otherwise, I would lose the link between the Theaters on the Theater class variable and the Theater in the Event instance.
Am I thinking about this incorrectly?
If you have three classes with class side collections you can have a make e.g. a dictionary and put the collections from the class side into it like
model := {
#theaters -> Theater instances.
#movies -> Movie instances.
#event -> Event instances.
} asDictionary.
The model object you can use with STON or fuel to store it and on reading back you store each of the values back on the class side variable. Simple and nice. I would use STON for that because it is equivalent to fuel but fuel has migration problems. Or better you need to load all your data, update fuel to a newer version and write it again with the new fuel version. STON is more reliable in that regard. Both have the problem that when objects change during serialization you might corrupt the structure of your data,
Gemstones
I am totally into the idea of using gemstones. Is there a backup and restore for objects here? do the relationships remain?
GemStone is a huge thing to tame. I would not say the above and GemStone are alternatives. GemStone is a lot to install and learn but you get something that makes it hard to corrupt your data. So you have requirements that make it fit into GemStone or you have requirements that make it a fit for STON. Between both there is no overlap but rather a huge gap between the applicability of each.
Voyage
This seems like a good solution, but I would rather stay in the smalltalk object store.
Absolutely. Voyage is good for some use cases but you have to deal with mongoDB (not sure the small libraries work right now)
You could also consider using soil (https://github.com/ApptiveGrid/Soil)
I might be a bit biased here :) but for most use cases this is the best of all the worlds described aboved. Even if there it has no release yet (coming soon) it is quite stable.
Hope this helps,
Norbert
Ideas?
Thanks!
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
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OOH.. I like this idea.
I’ll do a quick test on this and see if it works as expected..
For now, I want to store the data in the image.
The trick is, I like to start with a fresh image every few days. So, I’d like to open a new Pharo, pull the source code, then pull the data.
Thanks!
If you are keeping data in a Pharo image then you could just save the image instead of using STON. Alternatively, you could model your data in an Application class with three instance variables: theaters, movies, and events. Then you could dump the root application object and STON should preserve the relationships (I expect). I prefer this model since it allows me to create a test object that encapsulates all the data in one place (even if it is referenced from a class variable).
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV
@sergio_101@mastodon.social
https://sergio101.com
http://www.codeandmusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101
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Using this Will my links remain viable using this method?
Meaning that an event has a theater. That theater is also in the OrderedCollection of Theaters.
If the name of he theater changed in the Theaters collection, will that name change occur in the event theater object?
After bringing these collections back in via STON, will all of these relationships remain intact?
On Jan 18, 2024, at 8:26 AM, Norbert Hartl norbert@hartl.name wrote:
If you have three classes with class side collections you can have a make e.g. a dictionary and put the collections from the class side into it like
model := {
#theaters -> Theater instances.
#movies -> Movie instances.
#event -> Event instances.
} asDictionary.
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV
@sergio_101@mastodon.social
https://sergio101.com
http://www.codeandmusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101
http://www.facebook.com/sergio101
I figured Gemstones would be SUPER heavy handed for this application, but I have a list of five projects, each increasing in complexity that I want to launch and document. So, sooner or later, I will need a more robust solution.
Thanks!
On Jan 18, 2024, at 8:26 AM, Norbert Hartl norbert@hartl.name wrote:
GemStone is a huge thing to tame. I would not say the above and GemStone are alternatives. GemStone is a lot to install and learn but you get something that makes it hard to corrupt your data. So you have requirements that make it fit into GemStone or you have requirements that make it a fit for STON. Between both there is no overlap but rather a huge gap between the applicability of each.
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV
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http://www.facebook.com/sergio101
Am 18.01.2024 um 14:54 schrieb sergio ruiz sergio.rrd@gmail.com:
Using this Will my links remain viable using this method?
Meaning that an event has a theater. That theater is also in the OrderedCollection of Theaters.
If the name of he theater changed in the Theaters collection, will that name change occur in the event theater object?
After bringing these collections back in via STON, will all of these relationships remain intact?
If with relationship you mean that one object event has a reference to a theater object then yes. STON serializes the graph as objects and all references will be reestablished on materialization.
Norbert
On Jan 18, 2024, at 8:26 AM, Norbert Hartl norbert@hartl.name wrote:
If you have three classes with class side collections you can have a make e.g. a dictionary and put the collections from the class side into it like
model := {
#theaters -> Theater instances.
#movies -> Movie instances.
#event -> Event instances.
} asDictionary.
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key: https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV
@sergio_101@mastodon.social
https://sergio101.com
http://www.codeandmusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101
http://www.facebook.com/sergio101
Can you sketch out the complexity aspects of your five projects? Is this
all for learning, or are they “production” applications? Do you want to
gain experience with different ways to persist data, or are you just
thinking that you have to use different ways due to project complexity? It
might be that Soil database could handle all your use cases, so you could
avoid working through a bunch of databases, unless you want to.
On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 8:56 AM sergio ruiz sergio.rrd@gmail.com wrote:
I figured Gemstones would be SUPER heavy handed for this application, but
I have a list of five projects, each increasing in complexity that I want
to launch and document. So, sooner or later, I will need a more robust
solution.
Thanks!
On Jan 18, 2024, at 8:26 AM, Norbert Hartl norbert@hartl.name wrote:
GemStone is a huge thing to tame. I would not say the above and GemStone
are alternatives. GemStone is a lot to install and learn but you get
something that makes it hard to corrupt your data. So you have requirements
that make it fit into GemStone or you have requirements that make it a fit
for STON. Between both there is no overlap but rather a huge gap between
the applicability of each.
peace,
sergio
photographer, journalist, visionary
Public Key:
https://pgp.key-server.io/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x69B08F58923AB3A2
#BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV
@sergio_101@mastodon.social
https://sergio101.com
http://www.codeandmusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101
http://www.facebook.com/sergio101