Overview
You have several available options to export all of your data from your FogBugz On-Demand instance:
- Exporting Data Using the FogBugz XML API and related case attachments (also with API)
- Exporting to CSV (no attachments)
- Requesting a database backup (which are provided only on exceptional cases, and will not contain attachments)
We also cannot extract all documents into a separate Dropbox for you.
Solution
Please find below the comparison of each available option and the explanation of their limitations.
Exporting to CSV
Exporting to CSV contains only the cases and the case properties that are visible on the given filter from where the export is initiated. This means no case comments and no case attachments are included.
This solution is best used for reporting purposes when only summary information is needed about the cases.
Exporting Data Using the FogBugz XML API
Exporting Data Using the FogBugz XML API is more flexible, because it can be used programmatically, and you can use saved filters on your search criteria, which you can dynamically update from the Web UI without the need to update your XML data processing engine.
The FogBugz API also provides a method to fetch case comments and attachments.
Overall, this is the best option when you would like to export ALL of your data.
Requesting a Database Backup
This method has the most drawbacks:
- It needs the involvement of our infrastructure team, meaning it can take a longer time, depending on the current load of our infrastructure team (time)
- You need us to create it (dependency)
- It also does NOT contain case attachments
But why doesn't a DB Backup contain case attachments?
Because file attachments can be of big size, they could increase the size of your FogBugz instance's database, resulting in poor performance. But on the other hand, a given attachment is accessed rarely, hence the performance impact of it is huge compared to the frequency of its usage.
To avoid this, case attachments are not stored in the database, but in a separate file storage location, and only pointers to the file location are saved in the database, and the actual attachments are retrieved only when requested by a user. This way the overall performance impact is way lower. More technical details in our article FogBugz Attachment Storage: On-Demand vs On-Premise Database.
In order to provide you with a database backup that contains also your attachments, we would need to develop a feature that puts back the files into the database, after the backup is created. Developing and maintaining such a feature would have a high cost, compared to the frequency of its usage (we rarely get database backup requests, probably because of the nature of the product: cloud solution with high availability)
Considering all the above, our Product Team decided that such a feature will not be developed, and also each database backup request is reviewed and provided only on exceptional cases when it is needed for special reasons of our customers.
For the same reasons, we cannot extract all your documents into a separate Dropbox for you.