Galaxy dump

A Galaxy Dump exports template instances to a .csv file for editing or for adding an instance of a template. Modifications can be loaded back to the Galaxy. To perform a galaxy dump, select the objects you wish to export, the choose "Selected as CSV" from the Export Objects screen.

Note: You cannot perform a Galaxy Dump if the Galaxy object is selected.

When a dump is performed, any script, attribute, or attribute extension that is not locked at the template level will be dumped, each in its own column. A reference to the parent template is also contained in the file, in order to bring in all of the locked scripts, attributes and extensions. Attributes that are calculated or writable at run time are not dumped.

The dump and load functions are useful for quickly creating multiple instances of a template, instead of using the IDE.

To prepare a file for a Galaxy Load operation

1. Create one instance of the required template and dump this into a .csv file.

2. Open the .csv file using a text editor. Perform a search and replace to change all occurrences of object instance names as needed.

   Note: Microsoft Excel is not recommended for use in editing exported .csv files. Excel does not recognize the file as a .csv formatted file and all the data is displayed in the first column.

3. If using Excel, select the first column and "Convert Columns To Text" using delimited and comma as parameters. This places each column from the the .csv file into a different column.

   WARNING! NEVER click the Save button in the toolbar or the Save option in the File menu. Excel will save the spreadsheet as a .xlsx file and destroy the formatting conversions. See the following step for saving to a .csv format. Also, Excel may add extra commas to the .csv file, which will need to be deleted.

4. After modifying the file, select Save As from the File menu and make sure that the File Type is .csv.

   The file now has the valid format to successfully apply a Galaxy Load operation from within the IDE.

   In the following example, five additional instances were created from the $Boolean template. For three of the derived instances, the Area is not known, and for three other instances, the Area is HomeArea:

   ;Created on: 6/10/2023 2:01:12 PM from Galaxy:Test

   :TEMPLATE=$VSD

   :Tagname Area, Area

   VSD1

   VSD2

   VSD3

   VSD4, HomeArea

   VSD5, HomeArea

   VSD6, HomeArea

5. Save the changes to the .csv file.

6. Load the .csv file into the Galaxy.

For this example, the following events occur when the load is performed:

• The first three instances are created with all template functionality. If no Area is set as the default, the instances appear in the Unassigned folder in the IDE.

• The next three instances are placed in the area "HomeArea" (if HomeArea already exists. Otherwise, the objects use the Area settings for the first three instances).

The advantages of using the Galaxy Dump and Load over creating instances within the IDE are evident when conforming to a naming strategy.

For example, when a contained object has three levels and hundreds of instances, it is much easier to perform a search and replace operation to rename all the instances instead of naming each instance individually within the IDE.

Best Practice

When backing up the Galaxy database, use the Backup functionality available within the Galaxy Database Manager of the Operations Control Management Console. The backup contains all Galaxy information (including security configuration), whereas the simple export of application objects only includes the object structure and template toolsets.