Application Development Software

Our project besides storing files in Ifs also stores a lot of metadata. In other words we
have extended the Oracle Ifs data model and added our own class objects. In the process of building
our schema we have created several application objects and document objects (extending from DOCUMENT and APPLICATIONOBJECT). Many of the document class objects we have created have attributes which in turn are public objects (refer to application objects).

As our project has evolved we have found it extrmely difficult to make changes to these application objects.
From what I have been told by Oracle even miniscule changes such as the length of field, making
a field not required in an application object requires the entire object to deleted and re-created.

This makes things really bad escpecially when you have a class domain created for the application object and the application object is referred to as an attribute of a document. Hence re-creating an application object would require us to drop and class domain and the document object and re-creating them to let the changes take effect.

Thats one problem we face and will face on a on-going basis until we get our database schema perfect (and the probability of that happening is quite slim).

Another problem/question I have is when changes need to be made to the class objects created by us, how does one back up all the data before making the changes and upload the data once the changes have been made.

DOES ORACLE HAVE ANY TOOLS OR IDEAS ON HOW WE CAN MAINTAIN THE IFS SCHEMA WITHOUT HAVING TO DROP OBJECTS. IF WE HAVE TO DROP OBJECTS ARE THE WAYS BY WHICH WE CAN SAVE THE DATA BEFORE WE MAKE THE CHANGES AND ADD THE DATA BACK ONCE THE CHANGES ARE MADE. WHAT IMPLICATIONS DOES THIS HAVE ON THE INTERNALLY GENERATED ORACLE ID's.

I would really appreciate it if someone could provide us with pointers on how we can make maintenance a smooth process.

Thanks
Mathangi Srinivasan