BACKUP YOUR DATA

Occasionally, pieces of KHacc change in such a way that the saved
datafiles need to be upgraded to continue to work. In the past, this
upgrade was accomplished via an upgrade script that was distributed with
the new program. This process worked reasonably well, but did
occasionally hickup when the given interpretter was missing, or
incompatible with the script itself. Also, because they were a shell
scripts, they tended to be a little--how should we say?--obtuse.

BACKUP YOUR DATA

The solution is a plugin that can provide the same functionality. It
avoids the shell script problems because if KHacc can be compiled, so
can the plugin. The plugin can be a bit more straightforward than the
shell scripts as well, because they can utilize the QHacc engine instead
of just trying to decode the datafiles. It also brings the upgrade
procedure into line with other QHacc-related processes, because it
operates as an argument to the KHacc executable instead of a totally
separate procedure.

BACKUP YOUR DATA

So now that you know why the upgrade plugin exists, how do you use it?
It's a bit of a mix of KHacc and QHacc, because QHacc supports all the
command-line options necessary for the upgrade. Here are the steps,
assuming you're using the bash shell:

BACKUP YOUR DATA

o BACKUP YOUR DATA

o Figure out where your KHACC_HOME is (khacc --showhome 2>/dev/null).

o Restore any archives you have taken. The upgrade plugin may change the
  structure of the datafiles, which can in turn affect the structure of
  the archived files. If you don't restore the archives before upgrading,
  the archives may not be compatible with the new files, so later
  restoration may lead to undefined results. 

o Export your data (qhacc -f KHACC_HOME --export /tmp). The upgrade
  plugin only works against QHacc's native file format, so if you use
  some other database, you must create a native export. 

o Run KHacc with the upgrade plugin as its home (khacc -f
  UPG:/tmp). This will upgrade your old data and start a new
  instance of KHacc for your review. If everything looks good, save and
  close the application. 

o Recreate your datastore (qhacc --create PSQL:dbname=khacc). This is a
  good practice for all upgrades because the upgrade process may change
  the structure of the data. If you use a database backend, for example,
  the table structures may change, and these changes must be accounted
  for. If you are using regular old files, back them up and delete
  them to clear out the old, un-upgraded data. Then, recreate them.

o Export your data to your datastore (qhacc --home /tmp export KHACC_HOME).

This completes the upgrade.

Note: You can import the upgraded data from the upgrade location or
export it to your KHACC_HOME. Both will do about the same thing, but the
import operation takes longer because it will check for duplicates.