Database and index reinitialization

When you make changes that affect the database structure or OpenSearch indices, such as creating a new model, the underlying storage needs to be reinitialized to accommodate these changes.

When reinitialization is needed

You need to reinitialize your database and indices when:

• Creating a new metadata model (new database tables and OpenSearch indices are required)
• Modifying database schema i.e adding new columns to existing tables (note when you add new fields to the metadata schema, this does not actually change the database schema (records are stored inside json column in the database), so reinitialization is not needed)

Local development

Run the following command to reset your development environment:

./run.sh reset

This command will:

1. Drop and recreate all database tables
2. Delete and recreate all OpenSearch indices
3. Reload initial data (vocabularies, etc.)

Production

In production environments, you should use Alembic migrations instead of the reset command to preserve existing data. This part is still work in progress.