Transporting Catalogs using Catalog Maintenance Records

Learn to use catalog maintenance records for transporting catalog.

In order to maintain catalog values in your package, update recommends configuring the source and target stations as catalog maintenance stations. Catalog maintenance records (KW) in a package can only be imported on a catalog maintenance station. In general, your source station should also be a catalog maintenance station, although you can export catalog maintenance records from other stations. Catalog maintenance records are imported and exported using the Include Catalog Maintenance Records option. This option should always be enabled, except for when initially exporting the package (in this case, a dummy catalog maintenance record is added on the target station containing the ID of the last catalog maintenance record in the source database). If you do not use catalog maintenance records to maintain catalogs, the catalogs in the template always overwrite existing values on the target station.

When importing a package, CRM.cockpit does not import any catalogs in your package if the Include Catalog Maintenance Records option is enabled and the source package contains catalog maintenance records, see Importing Packages . This ensures that only changes made to catalogs on the development system are applied to the target database; other changes made on the production system are unaffected.

Note: When exporting from stations with a station number >= 10,000, deleted catalog values are only included if the tenant number is not empty. Deleted catalog values with no tenant assigned are ignored and not updated on the target system.

The recommended procedure for managing catalogs is as follows:

  1. Configure the source and target stations as catalog maintenance stations, see Station in the Rights Module in the CRM.core Administrator Guide.
  2. Add all necessary catalogs to the package on the development system.
  3. Export the package from the development system in an initial export so that the required catalogs are present in the zip file.
  4. Import the package on the target station (leaving Include Catalog Maintenance Records disabled) to initialize the catalogs on the target station with the catalog values from the source station, ensuring the two are synchronized.
  5. Maintain the package's catalog values on the source station, see Adding New Catalog Values .
  6. Enable the Include Catalog Maintenance Records option when exporting subsequent updates so that the package includes information on changes to catalog values, see Exporting Packages .
  7. Import the updated package on the target system using the Include Catalog Maintenance Records option to input the catalog maintenance records. Catalog values on the target station are overwritten by changes from the source station. Note that existing catalog values that have been changed on the source station is overwritten, including any values that have been changed on the target station in the meantime.
  8. If the source station is a catalog maintenance station (recommended), and the external key of the catalog maintenance record is empty, an ID is generated automatically when inputting catalog maintenance records and written to the Ext. Key field in the catalog maintenance (KW) record (composed of the source station number and serial number). The ID uniquely identifies catalog maintenance records from other catalog maintenance stations and prevents changes to catalogs from being applied on the same station multiple times.
Note: If you disable the Include Catalog Maintenance Records option when importing a package, the catalogs in the package are imported instead of catalog maintenance records. This updates all values in these catalogs on the target system, including any values since changed on the target system. Do not mix approaches: import either catalog values or catalog maintenance records exclusively (recommended by update) after the initial import. If the target station contains catalog maintenance records and Include Catalog Maintenance Records is not enabled when importing, you are prompted whether you want to overwrite the catalogs on the target system. When importing via the command line, define the behavior in the IgnoreCatServiceWarning parameter in the import XML file (default is false, i.e. the catalogs are not overwritten).