Wiping out an ATG repository

Or, wiping out all the data in an ATG repository. Sometimes you have to do it, for example to reset some tables to start from scratch: ATG provides a documented operational tag remove-all-items that can be written in an XML file executed with startSQLRepository. This tag demands an item-descriptor attribute, but to completely wipe out a repository you’ll have to copy/paste the descriptor names from the repository definition file.

Here’s a very quick and dirty page to produce the XML file:

<%@ page contentType="text/xml;charset=UTF-8" import="atg.repository.Repository" %>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE gsa-template SYSTEM "dynamosystemresource:/atg/dtds/gsa/gsa_1.0.dtd">
<gsa-template>

<%@ taglib uri="/dspEL" prefix="dsp" %>

<%--
  Generates an XML file that contains the "remove-all-items" tags to remove all items of all item
  descriptors in the repository component passed as the repository parameter.
--%>

<dsp:droplet name="/atg/dynamo/droplet/IsEmpty">
  <dsp:param name="value" param="repository" />
  <dsp:oparam name="false">
    <%
      // we need a Dynamo request to be able to resolveName()
      DynamoHttpServletRequest req = atg.servlet.ServletUtil.getDynamoRequest(request);
      Repository rep = (Repository)req.resolveName(request.getParameter("repository"));
      if (rep != null) {
        String[] itemDescNames = rep.getItemDescriptorNames();
        if (itemDescNames != null) {
          for (int i = 0; i < itemDescNames.length; i++) {
            // emit the remove-all-items tag
            out.print("<remove-all-items item-descriptor=\"" + itemDescNames[i] + "\" />" + "\r\n");
          }
        }
      }
    %>
  </dsp:oparam>
</dsp:droplet>

</gsa-template>

Save this page in a webapp and call it with specifying the repository to be wiped out:

http://localhost:8840/default/remove-all-items.jsp?repository=/TestRepository

You can then save the result in an XML file in the localconfig directory and execute it with:

bin/startSQLRepository -m module -repository /TestRepository /test-repository-remove-all-items.xml

See again the documentation for the system property to set to make it all work.