Backing up Zotero

SarahKiva

Hi there --

I am a newbie. I tried to backup zotero using the instructions on the FAQs but I can't seem to find the file pathway. I have Windows XP.

Thanks,
Sarah

Rintze

At the link below it is shown how to get to the preferences screen where you can find the path to the Zotero data.

http://www.zotero.org/documentation/zotero_over_a_network?s=backup

After following steps 2 and 3 on that page (going to the Preferences screen of Zotero and selecting the tab 'Advanced'), click the "Show Data Directory"-button. An explorer window will open showing you your Zotero data.

cbh

On a related subject -- does anyone have a magic incantation to make a text-format backup of the DB? I want something that when restored will re-create the DB with all the keys as they were. Export then import does not do this (as is well documented in the forum).

Why a text format? My reasons.
- Copying the database simply copies problems in the database.
- Having a text dump permits global text editing.
- I might be able to build a DB merge hack.
- I could possibly repair a text file by hand. Can't do that with a DB

I could probably make an SQL dump work for me, but I am hoping that someone has something better.

dstillman

You can use .out and .dump from the sqlite3 command-line client to generate a complete SQL dump. Not sure what other sort of format you're looking for...

This is essentially what our DB Repair Tool is doing: dumping the entire database to text (which often works even if an index is corrupted) and importing it back in. We set PRAGMA auto_vacuum=1 on the new DB first to keep the DB size down.

cbh

Thanks for the pointer to the tool. I appreciate the time taken to talk to a newbie. :)

To answer your implied question, ideal would be something like the RDF format that a restore utility could use to rebuild the DB, keys & all. Such a format avoids much of the need to figure out the table structure or the internal linkages. For example 1->n/1->1 associations could be formatted and included with the main record. Of course, such a format doesn't avoid versioning problems, but if a version header was included the restore tool could tell the user that it doesn't know how to restore the file.

In my misspent youth I have used similar schemes as an intermediate format for repeatable format conversions. Programs would generate the DB text form from whatever input they have, and the restore utility would write the physical DB.One common use was to convert a DB when the logical data models are very similar but the physical data models are different (e.g. normalization changes, new computable-value columns, or DB vendor changes).

dstillman

Well, that's more or less what Zotero RDF aims to be, minus the keys, but that's by design, since it's intended for import/export among different users. In a future version we could possibly give the option to preserve the keys when writing the RDF and deal with conflicts on import.