We have to make some changes to the structure of several related tables in our M

judym598

Certified Senior Developer

over 9 years ago

We have to make some changes to the structure of several related tables in our MySQL DB in our production environment (i.e., change the character length of a column). These tables are associated with CDTs that are used in a number of process models and rules. What's the best way to make these changes to avoid 'breaking' our process models and rules. Does this make sense?

1. Update the table structures first.
2. Republish each of the related data types (CDTs)
3. Run Impact Analysis and follow steps to update process models
4. Re-verify Data Store (?)
5. Export updated DS, CDTs (which technically shouldn't have changed since the column and data type is the same), PMs, rules, etc.
6. When importing the updated DS, CDTs, PMs, rules, etc. - Run the data scripts that will update the table structures FIRST.

Please advise if I have any of these steps out of order or if I'm missing any (such as - do I need to delete the CDTand reimport the XSD file ...

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0 judym598
Certified Senior Developer
over 9 years ago

...for the data types whose related tables have changed?)
Thanks!
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0 Mike Cichy
Appian Employee
over 9 years ago

CDTs should be abstracted away from such low level DB information. You should not have to update your CDTs at all, just run the new db scripts.
What you may have to update, is any validation rules on forms and in process that rely on DB limits. Are you relaxing the DB restrictions or making them stricter?
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0 judym598
Certified Senior Developer
over 9 years ago

That's good to know - I was hoping I wouldn't have to worry too much about the CDTs. We have a key table with this particular column that has a length of '6' that is related to others with the same column but the length is 10 or 20 characters - we're going to make them all '6'. Right now there are no validation rules on the forms used to capture this data which is why we found out we needed to fix it. We'll be adding them now. Thanks Mike!
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0 PhilB
A Score Level 1
over 9 years ago

You may wish to check the JPA annotations in the CDTs as you are able to define a field length for a field in a CDT which is then used if you allow Appian to create the database tables. It's likely that option isn't used, but it's definitely worth checking.
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0 judym598
Certified Senior Developer
over 9 years ago

Thanks Phil! I didn't think that was an issue, but I checked anyway!
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0 PhilB
A Score Level 1
over 9 years ago

In that case Mike is quite right - just changing the column length in the database is all that you need to do. You might want to run a query to export or transform the data that is currently too long, as changing the field length will just truncate that data.
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