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WiscCal (Native) - Archiving Data

This document explains how your can archive your WiscCal calendar data.

NOTE: Archiving cannot be accomplished using the WiscCal web client (via MyUW-Madison). One must install and use an Oracle Calendar desktop client.

Any user of a desktop WiscCal client who wishes to retain a copy of calendar data needs to consider the following options for archiving their calendar data to a file on their local computer (note that this calendar data file can be stored, of course, on any media the user has access to, including floppy disk, Zip disk, cd-r, dvd-r, or network file system storage). Users may find it valuable to consider archiving a year's worth of data each January or June to a file with an appropriate date, e.g., 'calendar_2003.txt'. Please follow the steps below to archive your data.

There are multiple export options for the various desktop clients:

Activity by Date
Activity by Person
Tab-delimited text file
Comma-delimited text file
vCalendar text file
iCalendar text file

Examples of each follow with comments about possible uses of the various export files. These examples show the same set of calendar entries.

The two Activity exports create files that are easy to read in any application capable of opening a text file (Any web browser [InternetExplorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Safari, Opera], NotePad, WordPad, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, OpenOfficeWriter, TextEdit, etc.).

Activity by date - text file, e.g.,

04-08-2003
   User, Joe
      11:30 am-12:30 pm   Taco Tuesday
04-11-2003
   User, Joe
      12:30 pm-1:30 pm   Meet with parents
      
Activity by person - text file, e.g.,

User, Joe
   04-08-2003   11:30 am-12:30 pm   Taco Tuesday
   04-11-2003   12:30 pm-1:30 pm   Meet with parents

The two delimited export files can be used to import the calendar data into applications that understand the delimited format (e.g., spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel, QuattroPro, and OpenOfficeCalc; or database applications like Microsoft Access and Paradox). They are less easy to read than are the two Activity reports.

However, use of such a file in a spreadsheet like Excel allows one to sort by the various columns, which facilitates reports of activity, etc.

Tab-delimited text file, e.g.,

Comma-delimited text file, e.g.,

"Export Item","Date","Start","End","Duration","Title","Importance","Access",
"Attendee Count","Owner","Creator","Last Writer"
"User, Joe","04-08-2003","11:30 am","12:30 pm","60","Taco Tuesday","Normal",
"Normal","1","User, Joe","User, Joe","User, Joe"
"User, Joe","04-11-2003","12:30 pm","1:30 pm","60","Meet with parents","Highest",
"Normal","1","User, Joe","User, Joe","User, Joe"

The only export file types that WiscCal clients can IMPORT, are vCalendar and iCalendar. These text files can be opened in word/text processing applications like WordPerfect, but they are difficult to read due to the format of the data they contain. One should use these formats if one intends to import the data back into one's calendar (understanding, of course, that the next purge cycle will remove them), or if one wishes to import calendar data into other applications that understand the vCalendar/iCalendar format (Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Calendar, and MacOSX iCal are three such applications).

The difference between these two formats is that vCalendar exports a sub-set of the data that iCalendar exports. Thus iCalendar data files are larger and take longer to export and import. Essential calendar data (attendees, category, date/time, summary [title], and priority) are in every vCalendar exported file. For data archiving purposes, we suggest vCalendar as the export type, especially since users would be exporting at the least a year's worth of data. In these formats, the data file begins with:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Oracle/Calendar
VERSION:1.0

BEGIN:VEVENT

END:VEVENT

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Oracle/Calendar
VERSION:1.0
BEGIN:VEVENT     [BEGIN ITEM NUMBER ONE]
ATTENDEE;ROLE=OWNER;STATUS=CONFIRMED:Joe User
CATEGORIES:APPOINTMENT
DTSTART:20030408T163000Z
DTEND:20030408T173000Z
SUMMARY:Taco Tuesday
LOCATION:Taco Johns
PRIORITY:3
STATUS:TENTATIVE
UID:8806-20000-420800-51
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT   [BEGIN ITEM NUMBER TWO]
ATTENDEE;ROLE=OWNER;STATUS=CONFIRMED:Joe User
CATEGORIES:APPOINTMENT
DTSTART:20030411T173000Z
DTEND:20030411T183000Z
SUMMARY:Meet with parents
LOCATION:2173 css
PRIORITY:1
UID:8806-20000-425932-1
END:VEVENT