Deep Dive into the SharePoint Content Deployment and Migration API - Part 1 - Stefan Goßner - Site Home

[Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7]

Introduction

Today I would like to start an article series on an interesting new feature in WSS 3.0: the Content Deployment and Migration API. A similar API has previously been provided in MCMS 2002 and was also added to WSS after MCMS was integrated in MOSS 2007. This first part will provide an overview about the API itself. In future chapters I will then demonstrate how to utlize this API to enhance your own applications or to get a better granularity than the out of the box tools allow you to do - e.g. how to copy a document library or a list to a different site collection.

WSS and MOSS use this API at various different places:

Content Deployment
STSADM -o export and import
Copy/Move operations in Site Manager
Variations
MCMS 2002 database migration to MOSS 2007

Actually any time when content needs to be copied or moved to a different location either in the same or in a different site collection.

Feature set of the Content Deployment and Migration API

The Content Deployment and Migration API provides the following features:

export an entire site collection
export a specific site inside a site collection including or excluding content in subsites
export a list or document libraries or even of a folder inside a document library
export a single list items or documents from a document library
export dependent objects (like images referenced by a page) by following links
generate as a compressed export file or in uncompressed format
allow export with a define a maximum size for the generated compressed file (multiple export files will be created if required)
allow incremental export of items based on a given change token. This will export all items that have been created, changed or deleted after the timestamp in the change token.
import the exported content with or without identiy preservation (means items will keep their GUID or not)
import the exported content under the same or a differnt parent in the destination database
do link fixup during import

For people who have also worked with Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 here is a feature comparison between the site deployment API of CMS 2002 and the content deployment and migration API coming with WSS:

	MCMS 2002	WSS 3.0
incremental deployment	yes	yes
full deployment	no	yes
deployment of a subtree of the site structure	yes	yes
deployment of specific selected items	no	yes
deployment of dependent items	yes	yes
deployment by ignoring the dependencies	no	yes
deployment of child elements of the exported elements	yes	yes
deployment without exporting of child elements	no	yes
import with preservation of the last modified date of the source item	no	yes
import without preservation of the last modified date of the source item	yes	yes
export of image libraries/resource galleries	no	yes
support import at multiple locations in the site hierarchy	no	yes

can be used to migrate 3rd party content

yes

Programming Reference

Assembly: Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment

Important Objects:

SPExport - controls the Export process
SPExportSettings - used to configure the export process
SPExportObject - defines which objects need to be exported
SPImport - controls the import process
SPImportSettings - used to configure the import process

You will find details about these objects in the MSDN:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.deployment.aspx

Rather than listing all the different properties and methods of these objects (which are already documented on MSDN) I will explain how to use these objects by providing some "real-world" samples in the next chapters: