Does JIRA XML Restore not wipe the database?

Question

Having used the XML restore mechanism after running some tests, the database is still 5GB (result from test) rather than the few MB I expected.

This is the command I'm using in postgres:

SELECT pg_database.datname, pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size(pg_database.datname)) AS size FROM pg_database;

The data isn't accessible via JIRA but apparently it's still in the db. Is that intentional?

I know that db dumps are recommended for backup and restore but in this case it's only a test system and I was being lazy...

The system runs JIRA 6.4.2

Seb Kouba · Answer

What about this scenario (i.e. mine):
- Create 200k issues, users etc (-> 5GB db)
- Restore XML from when you had 1k issues

Now I still have the 5GB of data in my db but Jira only displays / users / idk the data from the 1k issues

What happens to all that data that's now idle?

This isn't a huge problem in this case, since I'm messing with a test server but it's definitely not the behaviour I had expected and I thought maybe it's not meant to be this way / it might be interesting for people to know...

I guess I could reset the installation (i.e. db) completely and then do a system import of just the XML backup. I had expected the outcome to be the same as with what I have done, import over existing installation...

William Zanchet · Answer

A restore from a XML backup shouldn't wipe your database, but overwrite your data with the information from the XML itself. In other words, you'll lose what you have there, because the new data will be added there.

Cheers,
WZ