Symphony.

There have been a few statements over the last weeks that revision 6 is going to be the first release candidate of Symphony 2.

We are planning to use Symphony 2 for a medium sized website at my university that will make use of quite a large number of section links. As far as I know there will be structural changes in this area so my questions are:

• Will there be a upgrade path from rev. 5 to RC 1 concerning section links?
• Is there anything we should be aware of that could "break" in RC 1?
• Will it be easier for us to wait for RC 1 with the implementation of the website because of some huge code or structural changes?

I know that we are working with a beta version but I think Symphony 2 behaves quite robust.

One last question (the one that should not be asked): What are the rough plans of the development team? Will we see RC 1 or ever better Symphony 2 final this month, this summer, this year? Our server administrator will ask me exactly that :)

Will there be a upgrade path from rev. 5 to RC 1 concerning section links?

No - this is the main reason for the "beta" label. It might be possible to manually migrate data, but it's unlikely that we'll develop a migration script to assist this, due to structural/DB changes which make upgrading non-trivial and non-optimal.

Is there anything we should be aware of that could "break" in RC 1?

All sections/fields, data sources and possibly also events have been altered in a non-backwards-compatible way.

Will it be easier for us to wait for RC 1 with the implementation of the website because of some huge code or structural changes?

We never recommend waiting for the next update. The upcoming section link improvements have two main benefits:

1. Better scalability for section link DS filters
2. Some UI/workflow improvements

You'll need to decide whether these features are critical to the project and/or worth waiting for. If not, best to stick with rev 5.

Will we see RC 1 or ever better Symphony 2 final this month, this summer, this year?

You'll see RC 1 before the end of summer (or winter for us southern hemisphere folk) and maybe also before the end of this month if we're lucky. However, even though we can guarantee an update soon, there's no guarantee it will be stable and more suitable for this project.

Thanks a lot for this information, Scott.

All sections/fields, data sources and possibly also events have been altered in a non-backwards-compatible way.

Will there be a upgrade path for those features? Or does RC 1 will "break" compatibility in all those areas?

There aren't any significant conceptual changes for these, just a bit of reorganising of their internal structure/relationships, so it should be fairly straightforward to migrate or recreate equivalent ones in RC1.

I'd definitely recommend using the version we've got. I decided to wait for the, then soon-to-arrive, Symphony 2 for our new site; that was in August last year :)

Oh rats!

So, if I upgrade from beta5 to RC1 I'll have to re-input all of my content because the DB structure is changing?

It's not that big of a deal for me right now since I don't have a lot of content put in yet. It's nice to know this stuff so I can hold off on inputing all of my old content until the system's DB structure is sorted out.

What about releases after RC1? Is Symphony to the point where the DB structure will be set?

Regardless, I'm still really pleased with Symphony so far. I plan on upgrading and finishing my personal site with it no matter how much repeated data entry it'll require. After having to use a convoluted, bloated, slow XML-based CMS at work, it's really nice to be able to use something so lightweight and efficient. It's been a steep learning curve, but every 'ah-ha!' moment has made me like the system even more. Good job!

Thanks for the update on RC1, Scott. It's good to know how long I have to learn a bit more PHP to get ready for the new Extensions API.

It appears we need some sort of importer for Symphony. And I've had this idea to develop a means of taking XHTML output from popular blog software, such as Textpattern and Wordpress and using developing a means of generating a multiple entry admin form to import data into custom fields. I created a way to import countries from an XML file for ISO country codes just before multiple entries were introduced. I've been wanting to try out the same process with multiple entries.

If it's something anyone else might be interested in, I'll see what kind of time I can find to experiment.

@MrBlank:

Oh rats!

Sorry! Pretty much all the changes in RC1 are focused on improving performance and workflow, not trying to add new functionality, so it might make more sense not to upgrade existing sites that already run smoothly on beta5.

However, I think manually migrating data (running some SQL to copy entry data across) should be fairly easy after you've set up your sections/fields with the new version.

What about releases after RC1? Is Symphony to the point where the DB structure will be set?

Good question. We really don't want to ever have to commit to a "final" DB design, so post RC1, we're planning to develop a proper update system that will allow us to make performance-related DB changes. The reason this won't be in RC1 is that it's not needed yet, since there's nothing for it to update from.

The reason it's called "RC1" is because from here on, we plan to make upgrading as smooth as possible until, of course, we hit the next major version "Symphony 3", if that ever happens.

On the matter of why there's no upgrade path from beta5 to RC1: My limited (and possibly wrong) understanding tells me there's no real reason why a migration script can't be done, but even so, there'd be little point of using it since you'd miss many of the benefits of the performance/workflow improvements.

@bauhouse:

It appears we need some sort of importer for Symphony.

Indeed we do. Your idea of using XML for this is interesting. Our plans for the importer are still pretty much undecided, although I did write a fairly vague overview of this. Seems we are both trying to tackle the same problem.

I'm just kind of thinking out loud here: could you build an exporter/importer that defines a data schema in a simple format — YAML/XML or something — and then output/input the data in accordance with that? Possible, or am I way off ... ?

@Makenosound: You're right on the money. Your idea is similar to what Alistair suggested for this, but the problem isn't to do with importing/exporting or what format it's stored in, it's that the importer must be able to translate from one format to another.

The simplest example: Imagine importing data from a multi-select box field to a tag list field. The tricky part is making this work in an abstract way so that it can be done with non-Symphony formats too. Symphony's updater might work like this, and it should let the user decide where data maps to in the case of conflicts or ambiguities. Ideally, this should be presented in a simple and friendly manner, like a list of select boxes to choose where data goes, instead of requiring the user format an XML document to a Symphony-specific standard.

Regarding DB translating/updating, I was thinking about doing this on the DB level. I know very little SQL, so the thought had crossed my mind to export the DB as XML, work some XSL mojo, and output the needed xml form, then re-import into the DB.

Would this be possible, and if so, the best way to do it? I like Bauhouse's idea about absorbing output from other CMS/blog apps (just the possibility of this definitely makes Symphony Über), but what about at the DB level rather than the output level, just for the beta period? I assumed that 1.7 - 2 was too different to pull off, but maybe not within 2?

ashooner, you are correct to assume that migration would possible at the DB level.

The foundation and the concept behind Symphony 2 beta's DB structure is a dramatic improvement over version 1.7 and prior, so it is by no means obsolete. Symphony 2 final's database structure will still use the same basic concepts as the S2b but modified to solve the problem of query complexity and query count.

Symphony 1.7 and prior has a completely different DB structure to Symphony 2 so migration from the old to the new is synonymous to going from simple structure to complex. However, Symphony 2 beta and Symphony beta RC1 will both be similar complex structures, so the migration would almost map 1:1. I say almost because we anticipate that there will be nuances that require manual input/modification/additions (i.e. section link changes, how the section fields data are stored, the introduction of validation types) hence the difficulty of providing a comprehensive upgrade path from S2b.

hey how about the themes.. are they going to be compatible from 1.7 to 2.0? thanks

hey how about the themes.. are they going to be compatible from 1.7 to 2.0?

No. It will take a little work.

I've got another question: Will the changes made in the database result in structural changes in the XML output? (Which would affect a manual transfer of XSL files from rev. 5 to RC1+.)

XML Importer

I've created an ensemble to illustrate how it is possible, with some initial set up and configuration, to import XML as either multiple entries or as individual entries. Try out the Destinations Ensemble.

Perhaps this basic concept can alleviate some of the pain of having to import from previous versions of Symphony or from other content management systems.

I have found that I never want to duplicate the data structure of an older system when I migrate a site to Symphony. Invariable, the reason for the migration is to provide a better structure and better functionality than what was previously possible. This usually calls for a custom built importer. This should probably do the trick.

Will the changes made in the database result in structural changes in the XML output?

Shouldn't be anything major. However, with a few fields getting a make-over one might expect there to be some minor changes, but this isn't really related to the DB changes which will have no impact on how fields produce their XML.

Are there any news about the work on RC1? There have been a few hints about changes, new features or new workflows ... Anything that can be officially confirmed?

@Nils: Not yet, but we will have something to announce in the coming weeks.