Drupal site building often includes importing data, be it migration of content from a previous version of a site or regular updates from an external data source. Strategies for handling this have changed a lot over the years, but two main groups of modules are currently in use and well supported by the Drupal community: Feeds, which is primarily used for relatively simple migrations and regular updates of content, and Migrate, which is primarily used for complex data migrations from a prior version of a site.

This session will give a quick overview of these two modules using examples that demonstrate their different strengths and weaknesses.

Topics to be covered (briefly) include:

• Interdependance between imported content types (eg. nodereference fields)
• Reformatting content being imported
• Associating content and translations in a multilingual site
• Iterative migrations, updating in place, and partial importation/deletion of content
• Building a data migration QA process with a client
• Adding a handler for fields not supported by feeds or migrate, or for extra processing
• Executing your migration from the command line using drush

The session will include time for the audience to ask questions and give suggestions based on their own experiences.

Slides: http://mvc.koumbit.org/presentations/2011-drupalcampnyc/DrupalCampNYC.html