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We have a SDL Tridion 2013 SP1 instance using Oracle 11g as the CM & CD database. We also have Outbound Email configured with a few Address Books and thousands of contacts and other associated data (mailings, distribution lists, stats etc). We are planning on migrating this setup to DXA. We would be restructuring a lot of Schemas and there would be a significant amount of data entry.

Is is advisable to setup a new CMS and import the OE database from the older CMS to this new DXA one? How would it behave if the contents (Pages, Components etc. used in the mailings) are not found in the CMS? Or would we be better off by creating a new parallel Blueprint in the existing CMS environment?

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Rather than going the route of unsupported (partial) database imports or creating a parallel Blueprint, why not import DXA in your existing Blueprint, but as a new Publication (which you need to create then first) or actually import it directly in one of your Publications?

If you take a look at the CMS inport script of DXA, you see there is a way to import in an existing Blueprint by using the -importType parameter.

By default it is set at all-publications, but you can use the following:

  • Set this to master-only if you want to only import DXA configuration, Schemas and Templates into an existing master Publication.
  • Set this to website-only if you want to only import DXA example stock content and Pages into an existing website Publication.
  • Set this to rights-permissions if you want to import DXA rights and permissions in your CMS (do this after importing all Publications).

You then have to use the following parameters to specify some more details of the Blueprint you are importing in:

  • -masterPublication Default "100 Master", update this to map to your target Publication title

  • -sitePublication Default "400 Example Site", update this to map to your target Publication title

  • -rootStructureGroup Default "Home", update this to map to your root Structure Group title

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  • Thanks Bart. What difference does it make if we import DXA in our existing blueprint or we create a new parallel blueprint for DXA?
    – Husain Zahid
    Nov 11, 2015 at 8:35
  • New Blueprint is usually never a good idea since you can never merge separate Blueprints if you ever wanted to do it.
    – Bart Koopman
    Nov 11, 2015 at 10:11
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There aren't really any way to import an AM/OE database unto a new Content Manager. Content Porter doesn't support AM/OE items so you'd have to write a migration tool yourself using the AM/OE API.

As for how it behaves if the content is not found, it depends a bit on the item. Generally, it will give you a warning/error when you open the item - telling you that the item it is linking to has been deleted. But since it can only tell you the TCM URI of the (deleted/non-existing) item, you would have a very hard time fixing it manually.

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  • Thank you for your response. I am aware that there is no such tool available to import/export AM/OE items. By import I meant importing OE database (using Oracle EXPDP/IMPDP utilities) from one server to another.
    – Husain Zahid
    Nov 10, 2015 at 13:14
  • AM/OE has references to the CM items (by TCM URI). So it would only work if the other server has the exact same items (i.e. it was an exact copy)
    – Peter Kjaer
    Nov 10, 2015 at 14:59

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