All table grids are empty after a JIRA migration

Introduction

Assume you are using the table grid editor to host a number of table grids. For some reason you need to switch database system and/or you need to rebuild the database used by JIRA. To perform this migration you created an XML backup from the old system and restored this onto the new environment.

After the migration all table grids are empty.

Cause

As explained in Grid tables are not included in the XML backup - whenever you create an xml backup of your JIRA data, grid tables are not included. This is by design, as grid tables are autonomous from the JIRA setup - they can be hosted in any database reachable from the JIRA server.

Solution

How to export / import grid data

For each grid

Locate the table in your old database
Export the table as csv
Import the table from csv to the same table in the new database

MSSQL - tools to export / import csv files

Warning

Whenever importing data into the new tables, make sure that you don't overwrite existing data. It might be that your users already added new rows. These new rows will have an id which can collide with the data that you import ...
Every grid table has an attribute 'issueid' This refers the issue which contains the row. When transferring the data from one system to another, make sure that this relation is respected. For instance if the issueid of issue ABC-123 is 10 in one system, and 12 in the other - you will have to update the data being copied over.

How to locate the table in the old database

Check Where does Table Grid Editor store the data? to find out where the data is stored. You can always use the 'Home Directory and DB Browser' to access the database in case you don't have a direct link.