vData - Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, vData is an extension that is built to support all the components. You can Import/Export any of the tables available in the database. It works on the basis of database tables, not on components.

Steps to import Joomla Articles

• Before importing Joomla Categories & Articles, please import Joomla Users first. Users has reference in both Joomla Categories as welll Articles.
• After importing Users successfully, Import Joomla Categories first. Categories has reference in Joomla Articles.
• After importing Categories successfully, now you can import Joomla Articles.

If you are importing from Joomla 3 site to Joomla 4:

1. Since Joomla 4, we have another additional table for Joomla Articles ("#_worlflow_association"). This is required table. Here we need to provide a field "stage_id" of "#_workflow_association" table.
2. If you are importing from Joomla 3 Site (Which doesn't have "#__worlflow_association" table), you can edit your Import Articles profile vData and set "extension" field As Defined.
   See attached screenshot:
   
3. Then on import page, select any column having value 1 for "stage_id" of "#__worlflow_association". Maybe access column can have value 1 for all records.
   See attached screenshot:
   

Yes, vData allows you to migrate your Joomla Content from Joomla 2.5.x, 3.x version to Joomla 3.x, 4.x version. To transfer data from Joomla 2.5.x, 3.x to Joomla 3.x, 4.x version you do not need to install vData on older version. You can do so with your latest Joomla Portal that can be on 3.x, 4.x.

Please follow the below steps:

1. Install vData on Joomla 3.x or 4.x

2. Go to vData configuration and enter the Database details of Your Old Joomla (i.e. 2.5.x or 3.x site), Now It would consider your Old Joomla database as Its localhost database.

3. Please export all the data whichever you want after creating profiles as per your requirements.

4. Once data is exported, Go to vData Configuration and Tick Local Database option, It would again work with New Joomla i.e. 3.x, 4.x Database.

5. Now you can import the exported Data, It would be installed in New Joomla site.

Yes, vData is designed in such a way that you can migrate your Data not only to/from MySQL but also to/from other database supported by Joomla like MySQLi, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle etc.

Yes, You can migrate(import/export) Joomla Content to/from other CMS like Wordpress, Magento etc.

Yes, vData allows you to migrate your Joomla Content to/from different Legacy Versions of Joomla CMS like Joomla 1.x, 2.x, 3.x. You just need to install vData once on your current Joomla 3.x/4x site and then you can migrate all your Joomla Content within a few clicks - quick and easy!

The recommended standard encoding for all files used for Data Migration (Import/Export) Process is UTF-8.

vData gives you the ability to Import/Export your Data to/from multiple Data Sources. You can Import/Export the Data to/from the file type listed below: CSV JSON XML Additionally, you can also perform Data Migration (Import/Export) Process directly between two Databases.

Yes, you can define whatever separator you want to use in CSV file, such as commas, pipes, tabs, space and semicolons. You can set your own custom CSV separator in Configuration section of vData.

Yes, vData allows you to schedule Import / Export Process using a very simple User Interface. You can create a profile or directly write your custom Database query and then you can create a Cron task in vData which can be used to set up Cron Job on your server.

vData allows you to generate feeds in various data format like RSS2, RSS1, ATOM, XML, JSON and CSV. An RSS feed (also known as an XML or news feed) is a listing of a Web site's content. It is updated whenever new content is published to the site. There are different versions of RSS in use. RSS 2.0 is the most common. A newer format, called Atom, is a more standardized way of providing XML content updates.

Yes, you can transfer images as well with vData component. There is an option in vData to migrate images within any directory available on your server. In Joomla articles, Image is saved in JSON format, that's why you need to take care of this as well. But you do not need to worry about it, vData is capable to handle this. Here is the format: {"image_intro":"","float_intro":"","image_intro_alt":"","image_intro_caption":"","image_fulltext":"","float_fulltext":"","image_fulltext_alt":"","image_fulltext_caption":""}.

vData have multiple options for a field column to overcome various problems occurred earlier. Joomla saves user's password in encrypted form. If you do have passwords in encrypted form as joomla keeps, you can do it by including that fields as a "String". If you do have passwords in plain text then don't worry, HexData will also handle this scenario. In this case, you just include the password field as "Encryption" and select an Encryption method from the Encryption Methods list e.g. “CRYPT-MD5”. You'll also need to import user assigned group information into another table with a different vData profile. You can also import user assigned group information in usergroupmap table at the same time by joining users, usergroupmap and usergroup table.

There is a reference to option in vData, using this option you can include multiple columns of the referenced table. E.g. If there is a catID column in first table you are exporting which is associated with category ID in another table so using this reference to option you can include the title, description, alias etc. of category in your export. Please note you can apply this "Reference to" option to as many columns of first (base) table as you want. You can also apply "Chained JOIN" operation on base table to fetch data from multiple tables.

You can transfer any amount of data with vData, from a few records to Bulk Data. You can typically set the Import/Export Batch limit in configuration, to complete the Data Migration Process in small chunks to avoid Memory Exhaustion/ Execution Time Out in case of Huge Data. You can also complete the Data Migration Process in “One Pass” by keeping that field blank.

There are several things you can do to administer your database with vData, depending on what you want to do. Using vData Quick Mode View, you can directly Create New Table, Add New Records, Edit and Delete the Records from a particular Table, Repair Table and Optimize Table..

vData automatically does field mapping for you and also allows you to change the field mapping if you want.

Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. A large variety of Widgets provided to you by vData to give insight about the database, to let you monitor and analyze database and server performance. You can easily create widgets like Server response time, CPU Status, Daily Users, Processes, RAM Status, Latest Articles, and number of Articles etc. You can also monitor thread status- Open thread, connected, running, and thread cache. To add a widget to Dashboard, click on "Add Widget" toolbar button visible on top left of Dashboard. Start typing the name of the widget in the "Search Widget" field or create a custom widget with your custom settings. You can even add more than one copy of the same widget.

Yes vData support all Language. Now vData is available in English language only. But fortunately Translating it to other language is very easy. All the text strings are available in separate language files. You can copy english language files and translate all the text available in that particular file.

yes, vData comes with Frontend Cpanel Feature along with ACL for each section. You can allow a particular user group to perform data migration process (i.e. import / export) the Data from Frontend.

Notification Section is the place where you can set up your custom Notification Email Templates and Notification Rules which can be used to send Notification Emails automatically on meeting the certain condition via cron job. You can use it for getting Notification for like Daily Registered User, Daily Sales Orders, Daily Active Users, Weekly Activity statistics, Monthly Revenue, Exceeding Database Size Alert, Payment due on Clients, Pending reviews for moderation and many more.

YES, vData allows you to display information from a Feed / Stream available on any third party website to a page on your site which can be very useful for creating a product browser or price comparison website, Voting Result websites, Incorporate Online Reviews, weather reports websites, news websites etc. It lets you import data in various format like RSS2, RSS1, ATOM, XML, JSON and CSV. vData also allows you to set Cron Job to automatically import data from the Feed on a Regular basis.

Yes vData allows you to import content of any joomla third party component or any Database Table in various File Format like JSON, CSV, XML etc. You can use it to migrate data from/to all available third party Joomla extensions you can think of e.g. Virtuemart, K2, JoomShopping, HikaShop, EShop, iJoomla Ad Agency, DJ Classified, PayPlans, MossetsTree, Easy Discuss, JomSocial, EasySocial, EasyBlog, SobiPro, ZOO, Kunena, JEvents, Event Booking, OS Property etc.

Yes, vData allows you to show any particualr data as a List in Frontend, from your Database Tables in very easy manner. You just need set up Custom Display Profiles direct by selecting predefined Profiles or by writing your own custom query and allocate that Custom Display Profile to a Menu. You can also set different Templates for Listing Layout and Detail Layout for Displaying your custom data in frontend. To manage custom Display Profiles, please go to vData => Data Display.

You can find the steps to create import/export profile here (Please check point 14 & 15): www.wdmtech.com/vdata-documentation

Please note the following points as well:

- There are Three types of operation in each profile settings, Insert / Update / Synchronize

- If you choose “Insert”, records can only be inserted with Primary Keys ( IDs ) will be auto generated. In this case, you do not need to have IDs in your data file.

- If you choose “Update”, records will be updated with existing IDs. In this case IDs are must to import data.

- If you choose “Synchronize”, records will be update with existing IDs and extra records will be deleted

Please do not import Menus with their IDs because it will overwrite the existing Menus ( belonging to administrator section as well ). Choose Insert operation instead of Update and skip ID column in profile settings.