Describe the issue or problem
Review form settings are overwritten when upgrading form OJS 3.2.1-3 to 3.3.0.17 - the respective DB table (review_form_element_settings) gets completely gutted (possibleResponses are more or less completely empty now) except for the questions themselves, see screenshots below. There seems to be absolutely no one else with this problem on the forum and no indication in the release notes as to when the review forms were changed/overhauled. Can anyone from PKP advise?
Steps I took leading up to the issue
We upgraded using the upgrade script from 3.2.1-3 to 3.3.0-17
I confirm a similar issue with reviewer forms. And this is definitely a problem caused by the update process.
In our case, there was a migration from 3.1.2-4 to 3.3.0-17, after that we have the same mess in all forms. As a workaround, we copied the broken forms and created new ones based on them. However, developers need to figure this out so that future migrations don’t cause even more serious problems.
Thank you for confirming this - unfortunately the workaround is not really feasible for us since all the old review form replies and the review forms currently used in peer review will get destroyed by the upgrade script as well. We’re hoping this can be addressed in some way so nothing gets lost.
Sure, I understand, the situation is ridiculous. This is the most serious problem in our migration, everything else has been resolved. Well, waiting for PKP team response…
Hi all – if someone can send me (privately) a pre-upgrade dump form version 3.2, I can look into it. Also, please confirm if there were error messages or warnings during the upgrade process.
Thanks,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
We tried several approaches, and finally ended up migrating from 3.1 to 3.3 directly. That’s why I don’t have 3.2 dump, only 3.1.2-4.
As for problems we had some (DB errors) during the upgrade, but they concerned citation table, indexes, etc. After solving this issue (TRUNCATE TABLE citations + ‘parseCitations.php all’ after upgrade), we had no errors either when upgrading the database or when executing other scripts/xml.
After completing ‘upgrade.php upgrade’ successfully, we had problems in the web server part (frontend and backend), but the data/files did not raise any issues. The only loss is precisely the forms of reviews.
So I guess this is not a “3.2 problem”, but some kind of global problem with 3.3 migration.
We may have found a workaround that preserves the review form settings but it requires an intermediate step between 3.2.1-3 to 3.3.0-17. When we took the system from 3.2.1-3 to 3.3.0-3 and only then to 3.3.0-17 the review form settings remained as they are. But we just found out the image links broke as discussed in Article images link broken CAUSED BY UPDATING OJS 3.3.0.8. It’s always one step forward, two steps back
I’ve had confirmation that the patches listed above resolve the problem. If you’re using OJS or OMP 3.3.0-17 or older, or 3.4.0-6 or older, and you use review forms, I recommend applying the patch before upgrading.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team