csexport – How did I never find it before?

You can even learn about MIIS while on vacatio!.

I was skimming through my MMSUG digest this morning when I read Joe Stepongzi’s answer to someone about finding transient objects in the connector space by using csexport.

I jumped onto my virtual server to give csexport a go, and it looks like a mighty useful tool. It made me wonder why I’d been messing around with SQL queries to list disconnectors and pending exports.

If anyone else out there has been unobservant enough (or hasn’t stumbled across the right help files) to find csexport, it’s in the bin folder, and it has a range of filter options which allow you to export just the object types you’re interested in (such as disconnectors).

After trying a couple of exports I figured there’s probably room for both methods. It may just be my virtual server, but csexport seems slower than the equivalent SQL query. It also returns all information about the object, which I don’t always want. I think it’s nice to be able to understand the structure of the underlying SQL database, but really I’m just trying to find excuses for myself. In future I’ll be telling people to use csexport|

Thanks Joe.

Addendum to this: I think there is still a good reason to get to grips with querying the MIIS database – sometimes you want to get a list of metaverse objects which don’t have a corresponding CS object. You can’t get this info from querying the connector space.