Working with Archived Data

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At our PULSE conference we had a lot of interest in the Maximo Archiving with Optim product. One of the most common questions that we were asked was about how you could interact with archived data. Depending on your business requirements there are different ways that your user can interact with archived data. You can use one or more of these methodologies as they meet your business needs.

 

‘Just in Case’ Access – In this case the data will remain in the archive files and stored on lower-tier storage or even off site. This would be appropriate for data for assets in regulated industries where you must keep all maintenance data but it is not used for regular reporting. In the event of an audit or safety incident you will have several days to produce information so a longer retrieval time is not a problem.

 

Limited Regular Access – If you periodically need access to archive data for things like monthly, quarterly or annual reports and some latency in executing the reports is acceptable you should use Optim tools to access the data directly from the archive files. Included with your license is Attunity Open Data Manager that allows for a creation of an ODBC/JDBC connection to a ‘collection’ of archive files that can be used for reporting.  Your production database can also be part of the ‘collection’. Because the data is not in a relational database, the reports will not run as quickly as they would against a database but your maintenance costs may be lower. In this case there is no need to keep the data model in sync as long as all attributes required by the reports are in the files – the report will not care about differences between 7.1.1.6 and 7.1.1.7, for example. See the Optim Documentation for more information.

 

Power Reporting – In some cases, users who are requesting the data do not need it in the Maximo format at all.  In this case some (or even all) of the data in the archive files can be populated into a data warehouse or other tool. Optim’s table mapping and column mapping functions allow you to map different schemas. Scheduling can also be used to continuously update the data.

 

Archive Database – If you have 1,000 users that are interacting with the current data in your system and a handful that need the current data and historical data creating an ‘archive database’ may be your best option. In this scenario, your current data exists in your production database and historical data is archived into files which are then restored to another database with the same schema. Because you have less data for the larger population and a smaller population interacting with the larger data set both user communities will have better performance. If interaction with the archive and production data is required, a view can be created using federation to bring the two database together. Then you can copy the desired reports and clone the desired applications and set the data source as the new federated view.

For more information on Maximo Archiving with Optim Data growth visit the product page.