The migration capability will only be available for a limited time \u2013 about 6 weeks, to help with people transitioning from the early adopter program.\u00a0 We hope to eventually provide a general purpose data export \u201cfeature\u201d but, for reasons I explain below, we aren\u2019t able to do that at this time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nI\u2019d very much like to have a permanent export feature \u2013 I think there are lots of scenarios that it would enable, and I haven\u2019t given up on getting there.\u00a0 However, going into the the implementation of this capability we knew it was going to be very expensive.\u00a0 The big problem with it is that the service upgrades every 3 weeks but the on-premises product can\u2019t.\u00a0 That means that when we export, we have to \u201cdowngrade\u201d or transform the schema from the then current schema on the service to the schema that was supported in some version (realistically, the most recent) of the on-premises product.\u00a0 That means, for every feature we build, we must not only build the feature and build the upgrade path but we must also build the downgrade path.\u00a0 And building the downgrade path isn\u2019t the most difficult part \u2013 it\u2019s validating it on a large enough set of real world customer data to make sure that it works reliably.<\/p>\n
At this point, we know we have some large schema changes coming this summer as we enable process customization and other important features people are waiting for.\u00a0 We are not going to be able maintain the the \u201cdowngrade\u201d code path through those changes.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like it and I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll get my share of comments reinforcing this but I believe it\u2019s a call we need to make.\u00a0 To manage through this, we have decided to scope the capability, for now, to aiding people through the transition and will consider doing more later.\u00a0 I\u2019m not making any promises but will certainly listen to feedback over the next year.<\/p>\n
Of course, this data export\/migration feature is not the only way to get your data from the service.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the easiest and highest fidelity way to get it into an on-premises version of TFS.\u00a0 Your data is yours and you can use TFS features and APIs to extract any and all of your data any time you wish.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned over the next few months because we are going to have quite a bit of service related news.\u00a0 As soon as TFS 2013 Update 2 and the migration capability are available, I will let you know.\u00a0 I\u2019m telling you now so that you have time to get ready for it in the event you want to use it.<\/p>\n
Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
***UPDATED*** June 2014 – The early adopter program ended in may and the data export capability described below expired on May 20th. I know this is the second time I am doing this but I believe it is the last.\u00a0 For a refresher for those who don\u2019t remember what the early adopter program is, let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":14617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-vsonline"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
***UPDATED*** June 2014 – The early adopter program ended in may and the data export capability described below expired on May 20th. I know this is the second time I am doing this but I believe it is the last.\u00a0 For a refresher for those who don\u2019t remember what the early adopter program is, let […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/02\/8228.wlEmoticon-smile_58CD4724.png\")
<\/a>), we chose to delay the work on the data migration capability until we had the service in good shape again.\u00a0 In order to honor our promise of an orderly transition for our early adopters, we\u2019ve extended the early adopter program (free, roughly unlimited use).\u00a0 Those customers that created accounts before December 13, 2013 will have the expiration date of their \u201cearly adopter (free) status\u201d extended to May 7, 2014.\u00a0 At that time, the early adopter program will end and everyone will transition to \u201cstandard terms\u201d.\u00a0 Between now and then, we will enable the data export experience.\u00a0 Stay tuned for a precise date but it\u2019s several weeks away as of this writing.<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2014\/02\/5518.image_thumb_049320B0.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n