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General Technical

New feature: instant database dumps

One of the features that both users and the staff alike have been wanting for a while has been instant database dumps. Now we’re thrilled to announce you that such a feature is finally available!

Where do I find this feature?

The instant database dump generation feature is available on the statistics page, Special:Statistics, of each wiki. However, due to the high abuse potential of this feature, we have implemented certain restrictions.

Only stewards may generate a database dump. In addition to that, only one database dump process may run at a time. So, if someone is running a database dump for a different wiki, you will need to wait for that process to complete before you can run yours. Finally, a dump may be generated only once a week.

The good thing is that the process is instant: once the dump process finishes, the dump will be available for download from our database dumps site! There will also be a link to the newest database dump on the wiki’s Special:Statistics page.

Technical details

The extension was written by Jack Phoenix, based on code written by Krzysztof Krzyżaniak.

The generated database dump is an SQL file, which has been compressed with gzip to save some space. The dump contains the following core MediaWiki tables and their data:

In addition to these core tables, certain extension tables will also be dumped if the relevant extensions are installed:

Bugs reports & feature requests

Bug reports and feature requests can be made on our Bugzilla. Pick “MediaWiki extensions” as the product and “DumpsOnDemand” as the component.

On behalf of the ShoutWiki staff,
Jack Phoenix
Head of the Customer Support Team

Update on 17 June 2012: We’ve changed the format of the database dumps from SQL to XML due to popular demand. Please let us know if you encounter any issues with this.

By Jack Phoenix

I'm the head of ShoutWiki's Customer Support Team.

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