Data is sometimes stored in a simple form so that simply requesting data from a table using a SELECT statement is sufficient. There’s a wide variety of instances where the data is more stored in a form that suited the original developers but makes it more difficult to extract than a simple SELECT statement.
As systems evolve over time, the practice of data becoming more convoluted in form is evolving with it to meet these modern development needs. Accessing this data and viewing or storing it as text, or in a source code control system such as Git can be complex and hence in many cases is ignored as simply “too hard”.
Examples of this can include:
- A Database stores JSON, and some of the JSON attributes or content should be source-code controlled
- A Database table refers to a file on disk
- A Database table contains XML and some parts of the XML should be monitored for changes by developers
- File templates on disk should be included within a Devops process, however they are Word files and hence binary
ExaOps Database Tools
ExaOps makes accessing and extracting Deep Data easy, intuitive and automated. Just fifteen (15) lines of configuration can:
- Extract content from a Database table using a SQL query
- Select out elements of the JSON from the TEXT column of the table
- Format it
- Write a file to disk with the selected content using a filename that includes the ID of the table
Deep data facilities include:
- Making text-readable versions of Microsoft Word files so that changes to the Word files can be included and easily traced within a source code system
- Extract VBA from within Microsoft Word files so that the VBA source code can be managed via a source control system
- Various selection mechanisms to pretty-print content such as XML, JSON and YAML.
- Link database content to other content such as files on disk that the database table refers to
Deep data. Go exploring.
