I was thinking whether I could establish the same from using the DB access directly!? Or would that be too dangerous? In the past I have tried to transfer the user tables from an old instance into a fresh one....but failed due to all sorts of unpredictable errors..
We (the Galaxy team) do not recommend that you modify the database directly; there's just too much going on (keys, relationships, etc) to ensure that things go smoothly. In fact, the whole point of the API is to provide a high-level, programmer interface so that developers do not have to work at a low (e.g. database) level. If you were going to write some code, you'd be best to try extending the API to support what you want. Should you get history import/export working, we'd be happy to incorporate it in the Galaxy source. Best, J.