database design changes

[Anon]

hi, im a bit stressed right now... im deploying my new site which has some important database design changes. i obviously want to keep the data from the old design and import it into the new one. the problem is i cant figure out how to do this. nothing i try is working. how do other people do this?

to explain better, say i have a table with 5 colums, the new design only has 4. how can the data be exported/imported? ive tried exporting to csv and importing to excel to remove the columns, but excel likes to format my datetime columns, which mysql doesnt like... very frustrating...

hope someone can offer some advice.

thanks,
paul

[Anon]

Paul,

You might want to try some running some SQL like this

insert into new_table select col1, col2, col3, col4 from old_table

this will take whichever 4 columns you want to keep from your old table and insert them into the columns in your new table. Just make sure you put the columns in the select statement in the correct order.

Another option would be the SELECT INTO statement.

If you have created a new DB altogether, you can just import your old data as is into the new db and just ditch the table after the select is done.

Hope that helps, I know what a pain it is to change your DB structure and have to update the data.

[Anon]

thanks - i ended up using php to populate the new tables from the old ones. it wasnt the ideal plan but it did the trick. thanks

-paul
http://xhawk.net