Archiving your data

How to archive your Publish or Perish data

David Adams - Tue 20 Dec 2016 16:29 (updated Thu 19 Mar 2020 06:44)

To save your Publish or Perish searches and the associated results data to an archive, use the File > Export to Archive command. You can subsequently reload these data into Publish or Perish on the same computer or on a different computer through the File > Import from Archive command.

Publish or Perish data archives store the following information:

• The selected searches and their parameters,
• The search results,
• The metrics for the search results,
• The folder structure that contains the searches that are being exported.

The main uses for a Publish or Perish data archive are:

• Transferring your data from one computer to another,
• Creating a backup of your data that can be restored in the event of a computer problem.

Note: To export search data for exchange with other programs than Publish or Perish, see Exporting your data.

Exporting the data archive

To export the Publish or Perish data archive, use the following procedure.

1. Select the searches or the folder to export, or the My searches root to export the entire search tree.
2. Right-click on the selected item and choose Export to Archive, or choose File > Export to Archive from the main menu.
3. When prompted, enter a file name for the data archive and click Save.

Publish or Perish will then save the searches with all their parameters and their metrics, plus the complete results for each search. The resulting archive file has a .pxa file extension and can be used to import the same searches and their data into Publish or Perish on the same or a different computer.

Importing the data archive

To import a Publish or Perish data archive that you or someone else previously exported, use the following procedure.

1. Choose File > Import from Archive from the main menu.
2. When prompted, select the archive that you want to import and click Open.

Publish or Perish will then load the searches and their data from the archive and merge them into your existing search tree. While merging, Publish or Perish applies the following rules:

• If an incoming search is the same as an existing search, the existing search is overwritten if the incoming data are newer. If the incoming data are older than the existing data, no change is made.
• If an incoming search has no counterpart in the existing tree, it is simply added to the tree.
• If an incoming folder is already present in the existing tree, its contents are merged with the existing folder's contents.
• If an incoming folder is not yet present in the existing tree, it is added to the tree and its contents are then processed further.

During the merge process, Publish or Perish uses internal IDs to track individual searches and folders. The purpose of these IDs is to locate the correct searches and folders even if they have been moved to a new location in the existing tree after the data archive was originally exported. On occasion, this might cause imported searches or folders to show up in a different location than they were in when originally exported, but that is by design and avoids duplicating the information in the old and the new tree locations.