We've been on Clarity (on Demand) for about five years and I've done a little XOGing here and there just to move configuration between environments. I've always used the command line tool that CA provides which works, but is not exactly user friendly. Each time I needed to move a large amount of config it required many hours of time to prep the XML files, test them, then move them from Dev to Test then to Production. Files can only be done one at a time and it's a pretty labor intensive effort that requires a lot of concentration.
Enter the XOG & Query Bridge tool from IT ROI (which is FREE, by the way!) It's AWESOME! For XOGing it offers two methods - a simple request version similar to the GUI version that was available in Clarity until recently and a bulk input version that can handle larger input files and even multiple files compressed into zip format. I used the simple version to create my write files one by one then zipped them all up and submitted them as one bulk request into my test environment. Naturally this won't eliminate the need for you to clean up the files and remove unwanted stuff that gets pulled out before you XOG things back in. The XOG Bridge does, however, also offer an XSLT tranformation tool that could assist with that. I haven't used it yet because I'm not that advanced with XOG but if I had it might have helped me resolve a few issues that caused me some grief. Once I had all the bugs worked out of my individual files, moving everything into Production very literally took FIVE MINUTES. Amazing.
The other component of the tool is a query client that lets you supply SQL code and then spits out the result for you as a table on screen plus as an Excel files. For On Demand customers like me this is as huge help. Now I don't have to go through the headache of logging in to VPN just to do a quick query on one of my environments. I haven't really used the SQL tool much yet, and I must admit that my first attempts to copy/paste some existing code ran into a few hiccups. It doesn't seem to accept table or field aliases, which is a bummer because I always use them when writing my SQL code. I also wish that they would provide the NSQL code that they create behind the scenes as an output in addition to the data itself. Saving me some of the headache of converting my SQL to NSQL would be a huge help. At any rate, it's still a very useful feature that I will likely take advantage of more in the future.
There is a user guide provided with the tool, as well as a desktop version that offers most of the same functionality available in the web version. Check it out and register for your account!
https://xogbridge.itroisolutions.com/xogbridge
Disclaimer: I don't work for IT ROI and they aren't paying me to submit this post. I'm just a pleased customer who wants to give Federico (fpena) and his team some thanks for a great tool!
Got this update from Federico after my post. Just another reason to use this tool - great support behind it!
"As for the NSQL you ask for, it dynamically creates it for you it should have a name like
Username_loginUser_qbtemp. In my case it is fpena_fpena_qbtemp. Note that it overwrites the NSQL every time you change it, but you can get the NSQL out of it.
As for aliases and such, yes agreed, not very flexible, and this is because we have to translate to NSQL (which is less flexible), but a good workaround is to write an inline view, and put your aliases in there (meaning your from is your select, then sky is the limit of aliases).
For example
Select prjName, prjCode
From
(select inv.code prjCode, inv.name prjName from inv_investments inv)
Hope this helps."
THanks Amy for your kind words.
Just in case someone is on premise or wants a desktop version of the tool, they can download here https://xogbridge.itroisolutions.com/xogbridge-resources/desktop-versions/XOG-Query-Bridge-desktop-v1.0.4.exe
Thanks
Federico
This document was generated from the following discussion: Great new XOG tool - check it out!