Revision of Exporting MPX, Part I from Thu, 03/11/2010 - 18:37

Why and what for?

This is a description how to get XML data out of MuseumPlus (M+). I write this for Rainer and his current project. The idea is to see how this export can be optimized, and how much can be done by others.  Originally, I have written this export for ethnoArc. This page describes the first part of the process which could easily be done by someone else.

Technical overview and justification

Since I do not have access to the M+ internals, I have to use an existing way of exporting data and this is via M+'s reports. Strangley enough, M+ creates rtf files with the data in tables when one creates certain reports. I use those rtf, transform them to stupid xml with a perl script and then with another transformation (in XSLT) to nice xml. I described the format in an older post.

Preparations

I defined several lists (in M+ they are called "Liste") with almost all the fields in the Sammlungsmodul and PersonenKörperschaftsmodul.  (In the future, I might post them to show you how this step works, but at the moment this is not necessary.) The only important thing at this point is how the lists are called (list name in M+ followed by short label):

• EM-Export-Sammlung eABasic: eabasic
• EM-Export-Sammlung eADatierungExtras: eadatierungextras
• EM-Export-Sammlung eAext: eaext
• EM-Export-Multimedia eA: mume
• EM-Export-Sammlung eAoov: oov
• EM-Export-Personen/Körperschaften (PerKör): perkor
• EM-Export-Personen/Körperschaften (PerKör ext): perkorext

Step 1: Selecting records for export

The first step is to identify all the records you want to export. You could, for example, select all objects (records) you want to export in one group ("Objektgruppe"). Up to approx. 3000 objects work on my machine without a problem.

Create another group for and put all the Personen/Körperschaften which you need.

M+E Objektgruppen

Step 2: Export to RTF

For every of the seven lists named under export the whole gruppe.

Select the next list

1.  M+ creates a file in C:\Temp\RFTFile.rtf
2. Rename that file to appropriate short list name (as given under preparations): eabasic.rtf
3. Repeat for first five lists
4. Change to the Personen/Körperschaften Gruppe you created in Step 1 and repeat for the last two lists.

Put everything in a folder and compress it using zip and send it to me (e.g. via Pool).

Troubleshooting

• My M+ complains "Keine Vorlage vorhanden - Datenquellengeneriert". This is intended and no problem.
• You have to close RTFFile.RTF in Word, otherwise M+ does not generate a new file.