JIRA 4.0 : Merging 2 JIRA instances
This page last changed on Jun 18, 2009 by rosie@atlassian.com.
There are a number of tools and procedures available, that make it possible to merge projects and issues of several JIRA instances into a single instance. This may be useful, for example, if you have several JIRA instances in your organisation, and would like to combine them into a single instance for easier management and administration.
CSV Export and ImportThis procedure involves creating a CSV export of your data in one JIRA instance, then importing this CVS data into another JIRA instance using the CSV importer. This will not include all data (e.g. Attachments, Change history, ...), but it provides the easiest way of migrating projects into a single JIRA instance. As of JIRA 3.2, the Issue Navigator Excel View has been vastly improved and a lot more fields can be included in the export. In order to merge data from two JIRA instances, you will need to
Data that won't be migrated includes:
The CSV Export and Import method is the easiest approach to merging two JIRA instances. Novice users should follow this approach. Whilst some data can't be migrated using this procedure, all the information stored in an issue's fields will be migrated. SOAP Extraction and Insertion - SwizzleJIRA provides a SOAP API to query and update its data. Using this API it is possible to pull information from one JIRA instance and push this information to another instance. In order to do this, you will need to create a SOAP Client to carry out this operation. Fortunately there's already been a client contributed by the JIRA community. Swizzle is an open-source project that aims to extract data from an unconsumable source and turn this data into a consumable form. With regards to JIRA this means extracting data from one JIRA instance and turning it into a form that can be imported by another JIRA instance. Swizzle in fact includes a JIRA Migration module which is aimed directly at making the migration of data from one JIRA instance to another possible. Swizzle achieves the migration by extracting data via JIRA's SOAP interface and turning this data into a Jelly script, that can be executed on another JIRA instance. In order to carry out a data migration using Swizzle, please follow its instructions as closely as possible. In order for Swizzle to work correctly, you will need to setup your JIRA instances using the following settings:
Despite being able to migrate more data than the CSV method described above, Swizzle still suffers from various limitations:
Swizzle provides a more complete data migration than a CSV migration; however, it is also more difficult to carry out. This should only be considered by power users who are not afraid to execute Java code from the command line and modify XML files and Jelly scripts directly. Merging XML Backup or Databases
Merging XML backups or modifying the database directly is the most difficult, but can also be the most complete data merge mechanism described in this guide. This section will not list a definitive guide for how this can be carried out (as this would simply be too difficult to list consistently for all the different versions of JIRA), but provide a few pointers and external resources that will be useful. When merging JIRA data, the main things to worry about are:
A set of instructions has been contributed by the JIRA community that makes this procedure easier, using XML backups produced by JIRA. Please follow the instructions outlined here for merging two JIRA XML backups safely. Merging two JIRA instances via XML or the database is by far the most difficult method. It involves a lot of manual steps and has by far the greatest potential to corrupt your data. It may, however, yield the most complete data migration of all the procedures described here. |
![]() |
Document generated by Confluence on Oct 06, 2009 00:26 |