Archiving

Data Archiving enables storing of unused or rarely used data records separately from active, current data. 'Retired stock components' or 'closed tickets older than 2 years' are examples of "stale" data to be archived.

Valuemation data archiving involves the following:

• Create the archive database
• Configure the archiving process
  • Set root object types
  • Create archive configurations

  Fine-tune the archive process:

  • Run archive simulation
  • Examine the archive log
• Perform the actual archiving
  • Run archiving manually
  • Scheduled archiving
• View the archived data
• Maintain the archive database during future updates

Archiving at a Glance

Archiving is intended for object types accumulating large numbers of objects over the course of time. A clearly definable condition of expiration or obsolescence must exist for the objects. The intention is to keep the expired or obsolete objects accessible while eliminating the burden of storing huge quantities of rarely used data in the 'productive' section of the database.

The above described object types are the primary target for archiving. These are marked as 'root' object types. Together with them, some related object types must also be archived. The application uses existing delete rules on the relations to automatically determine which related object types should be archived. This automatic inclusion/exclusion can be manually overridden should the actual business logic dictate so.
For each archived root object type, it is necessary to create a condition specifying which objects should be archived.

The object type selection together with the condition and rules for handling relations represent an archive configuration. For each archiving 'case' (e.g. 'closed tickets', 'expired systems') one such configuration must be created.

The archive action moves objects specified by the configuration into an archive database schema which has been created as a copy of the main database schema structure.

Archived data can be viewed using standard catalogs and editors of the object type switched to the 'Archive' mode. Archived data can no longer be edited. Object attachments and rich text images are also archived.

Archiving for Data Protection

In addition to its primary goal, archiving can also be used as a data protection tool. In this scenario, selected data is archived and access to the archived data is restricted by Valuemation roles. For this purpose, archiving is usually used in connection with the Data Protection Manager.

Important note: No De-archiving functionality is currently provided. Once archived data cannot be easily moved back to the main database schema.

Terminology note:

Oracle terminology is used throughout this chapter. The term 'schema' or 'database schema' is used to refer to:

• database schema (Oracle)
• database (MSSQL, DB2)