[WWdevel] Re: best way to archive courses

[Sam Hathaway]

On Dec 19, 2004, at 3:13 PM, Sam Hathaway wrote:

>
> On Dec 16, 2004, at 4:52 PM, Arnold Pizer wrote:
>
>> Hi Sam,
>>
>> Every semester we archive the current courses keeping them active for  
>> another semester (with a different name, e.g. fall04-mth161) and then  
>> create a new course (mth161).  My question is how best to do this  
>> with WeBWorK 2.  This is a standard question which will come up so we  
>> should have instructions on what to do (and eventually an easy  
>> automatic way to do it).
>
> There isn't really an easy way to rename courses, since the database  
> names are given in terms of the course name. However, I think we can  
> get around this by renaming the databases manually, and this can  
> certainly be automated. (In fact, a renameCourse() routine was  
> originally planned for CourseManagement.pm, but we never completed  
> it.)

Just wanted to let you know that I wrote renameCourse() a while back,  
and it works, with some caveats. First, it only works with courses that  
use the "sql_single" database layout. However, you can convert "sql"  
courses to "sql_single" courses using the "sql2sql_single" command-line  
utility. See  
<http://devel.webwork.rochester.edu/twiki/bin/view/Webwork/ 
CourseAdministrationManual> for more information.

Second, no command-line script exists -- the functionality is only  
available via the admin course.

I've stopped work on this for now, since our short-term priorities lie  
elsewhere. However, it shouldn't be hard for someone to add support for  
the other database layouts or the command-line interface.
-sam