Deployment Scripts

When you deploy a file to a server you may need to run a script to set up the file for use or to complete an upgrade process that can't be done as part of data migration. OttoFMS exposes both a post-deployment and a pre-deployment script. Both of these scripts happen on the destination server and can be run in any file on that server, whether or not the file is part of the deployment. The pre-deployment script runs before any other actions take place, and the post-deployment script runs after the new files are installed and opened.

Example use cases

Data cleanup

Imagine that as part of an upgrade you want to split a field into two fields. Lets say you have a field called Name that contains a full name and you want to split it into FirstName and LastName. You can't do this as part of the data migration because FirstName and LastName don't have values in the old version. They will be empty after a data migration.

So you can run a post deployment script that splits the value from the Name field into FirstName and LastName after the data migration has completed.

Setup a file for first use

If you have an application that you sell to many customers, you may want to run a script after it get's installed on to a server for the first time. This script could setup the database, create a user account, or do any other setup that is required before the application can be used.

Resetting static data

You may have some tables that should only contain certain values. You can use a Post Deployment script to reset these tables to their default values.

Clearing log data

You may want to clear out log data from a table after a certain period of time. Since a data migration will copy all the data in to your new file, you can use a Post Deployment script to do this.

Reverting or Cancelling a Deployment or Sub-deployment

When you configure your deployment to use a Deployment script, you can also configure it to revert or cancel the entire Deployment or Sub-deployment if the script fails. This is useful if the script is critical to the deployment and you don't want to leave the system in an inconsistent state if the script fails. You will see this option in OttoDeploy when you configure your Deployment script.

If you set it to Revert(for post-deployment scripts) or Cancel(for pre-deployment scripts), then you will need to make sure your script calls a few specific steps (see example below) at the end to indicate success or failure. We refer to this as "calling done". If your script completes as you want and you call done, then the deployment will continue. If you don't call done, then the deployment will be reverted or cancelled.

Calling "done"

This script lets OttoFMS know that the migration script completed successfully. For Pre-Deployment scripts, the filename in the script below will need to be adjusted to /otto-predeploy-result.txt.

Set Variable [ $filepath ; Value: "file:" & Get(DocumentsPath) & "/otto-pms-result.txt" ]
Set Variable [ $done ; Value: "done" ]
#
Create Data File [ “$filepath” ; Create folders: Off ]
Open Data File [ “$filepath” ; Target: $fileId ]
Write to Data File [ File ID: $fileId ; Data source: $done ; Write as: UTF-8 ; Append line feed ]
Close Data File [ File ID: $fileId ]

Example File

This example file contains the script steps you need to call "done".

Download PostDeploymentScriptEx.fmp12