Multi-query center: Archives

Publish or Perish tutorial

Anne-Wil Harzing - Sat 6 Feb 2016 16:10 (updated Mon 2 May 2022 15:59)

Note: This tutorial was originally written for Publish or Perish version 4 and all screenshots come from this version. Later versions of Publish or Perish show the multi-query center at the top of every screen for easier access. Its basic functions are similar to PoP4, however.

Having spent a lot of time on creating queries and logical folder structures in the multi-query center, you obviously do not want to go through this entire process a second or even third time. This might be necessary in the following situations:

• Transferring your work after buying a new computer.
• Reinstating your work after a computer hard-disk crash.
• Sharing your queries with a research collaborator or research assistant.

Whatever the reason, Publish or Perish has a sophisticated system for archiving your data, and exporting or importing them.

Archiving your data

To save your Publish or Perish queries and the associated results data to an archive, use the 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 Import from Archive command.

Publish or Perish data archives store the following information:

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

Exporting the data archive

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

1. Go to the multi-query center.
2. Select the queries or the folder to export, or the All queries root to export the entire queries tree.
3. Right-click on the selected item and choose Export to Archive, or choose File > Export to Archive from the main menu.
4. When prompted, enter a file name for the data archive and click Save.

Publish or Perish will then save the queries with all their parameters and their metrics, plus the complete results for each query. The resulting archive file has a .pxa file extension and can be used to import the same queries 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 queries and their data from the archive and merge them into your existing queries tree in the multi-query center. Unless the file is very large, this typically takes only a few seconds, so if you think nothing happened you probably just blinked ☺.

Rules applied when merging queries

While merging, Publish or Perish applies the following rules:

• If an incoming query is the same as an existing query, the existing query 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 query 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.

The nitty gritty details….

During the merge process, Publish or Perish uses internal IDs to track individual queries and folders. The purpose of these IDs is to locate the correct queries 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 queries 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.

Support Publish or Perish

The development of the Publish or Perish software is a volunteering effort that has been ongoing since 2006. Download and use of Publish or Perish is and will remain free (gratis), but your support toward the costs of hosting, bandwidth, and software development are appreciated. Your support helps further development of Publish or Perish for new data sources and additional features.

Feedback

PS: If you are using Publish or Perish on a regular basis, please take 5 minutes to provide me with some feedback.