No migration tool yet? Then we need this instead...SmartApp Settings Documentation

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@brianlees

Am I missing something that is harder than I think? If this could be done, it seems like it would be an awesome feature for people making changes to their system at any time…or maybe wanting to “backup” setting by taking a snapshot prior to making changes to see how they work.

I made a similar suggestion based on my extensive background as a database manager. And admitting the details would take a few days and right resources to figure out. I don’t feel that I am over-simplifying…

Migration to V2 - Hurdles and Best Practices

There’s no reason that the back-end data couldn’t be 100% cloned from 1 Hub recordset to the new one. – All that is needed is to create a temporary set of Device Records, if foreign key constraints can be temporarily disabled during the account’s migration. I’m 100% serious: Given full access to the SmartThings device Cloud database for a single account… Very rough pseudo code / sketch: Lock the account and database for migration mode, limiting what functions may be performed; disable foreign key constraints. Add a friendly alternate candidate primary key – heck, use the Label Attribute (e.g., make the user ensure all the Things have a unique name by using the existing Properties/Rename function in the UI). Add a temporary column to mark “devices set for replacement”. Remove the devi…

So: There are obviously non-technical factors involved here, especially when the need for any large portion of migration automation has been known from the day Hub V2 development was announced, while the CEO with over 200 Devices doesn’t find migration to be as arduous as everyone else knows instinctively.

I firmly believe that a solution based on my suggestion would cut the effort by around half, and that with a small engineering team could have been built in a month or two in parallel with the hub testing. That id due to the huge advantage of the Cloud — all the required Device and SmartApp configuration data is in one place able to be manipulated by SmartThings programmers arbitrarily (ie, just map and move reference keys from one object to another).