Retaining Locally Created PGDBs Across New Pathway Tools Versions

edit

There are two Pathway Tools software releases per year. Users who have built a PGDB using a prior version of Pathway Tools and who want to upgrade the software will usually want to retain that PGDB. As of version 10.0 of Pathway Tools, retaining locally created PGDBs became trivial because they are now kept in a directory called ptools-local that is outside the directory containing Pathway Tools itself, and that is unaffected by new Pathway Tools installations.

Do be aware that when installing a new version of Pathway Tools, the schema of your old PGDB must be upgraded to be compatible with the new software, at which point it will become incompatible with the old version of the software. Through version 10.0 of Pathway Tools, we suggest you back up your PGDB before performing the upgrade because the upgrade will overwrite the existing version of your PGDB; the upgrade is performed using the command Tools->Upgrade Schema of Current PGDB. After version 10.0, the software will upgrade the schema automatically the first time the PGDB is opened under a new version of the software, and will also create a new version directory for the PGDB so that its previous version is retained.

If the new Pathway Tools version is to be installed on a new computer, then existing PGDBs can be copied using e.g. a Tar file.