I did something like that a year ago, but probably wouldn’t do it like that again.
Last year, I took a backup of the relevant MySQL table(s). Which creates, among other things, a bunch of SQL INSERT statements to re-create every row of the table(s). For straight search/replace, I used NotePad++ (Open Source text editor). For more complex changes, I wrote a program (in Regina REXX — please don’t laugh). Once I was happy, I restored the table(s) using the modified INSERT statements. Obviously, to avoid outages, I perfected the process over several weeks, then actually repeated it in 15-20 minutes to minimize the outage.
If I were to do it again, and only had to do straight search/replace, I would use the functionality built into MySQL. You can code SQL (an UPDATE statement, I believe) that will do search and replace of a table column (field) for all rows of a table. The gateway to MySQL documentation is here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/
To put this all in context to your original question, I used Microsoft Access for nearly a decade, but, to quote an old Perry Mason episode, “I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw a horse.” On data, that is. I’d just be too scared that some oddball character in a post would get corrupted/changed during import or export from MS Access.
Thanks Adiant. In the past I have updated Dbase tables w/ Access w/o any problems, but never SQL tables. The big caveat about the dbase tables was always to download them from the server and open them directly; and not use any import/export features in Access or the web site sofware.
Thanks for the advice about using MySQL though because that should work nicely. I’ll test it on a dev site of course.
I have installed the search-and-replace plugin per the advice of Michael (moderator) and although it is too late for the site in question it does look like it would have done exactly what I wanted. I will keep it in mind for the future.
Yes, I learned something, too, having not previously been aware of that plug-in.
Yes, it works very well. In a perfect world I would like it to give me back some info about which pages or posts it changed. It’s easy to end up changing things that you didn’t intend to with a plugin like this. All I’m saying is be very specific about what kinds of strings you are looking to replace, especially if you use it to make on-page code adjustments. Hopefully your code is standardized enough that you can avoid unknowingly replacing the wrong things.
