Purging data

Purging is a process of moving records from the base or main database table to the history table. The base table is also referred as the key transactional table that is archived.

Overview

Data, if not purged results in the increase of database size that can negatively impact the database operations and affect the overall system performance. The performance impact can be observed by the delayed response in a UI, increased database backup time, and so on. As managing data is key to protecting the business, purging records periodically is highly beneficial in reducing the database bloat with marked improvement on the system performance.

The purge process involves:
  • Moving the relevant data from the base table to the history table by using the business rules specified for purge in the Setup.cfg file.
  • Deleting purged rows from the base table once they have been successfully transferred to the history table.

Purging data in IBM PEM

The Purge tool is a command line tool that enables you to delete obsolete data from the main database tables and delete or archive the data to the database schemas. Before initiating the purge process, configure the purge properties in the Setup.cfg file. For more information, see Setup.cfg file.

Note: The Purge tool is not an agent, and therefore, cannot be scheduled like certificate update. Run the Purge Tool when you want to archive or delete the data based on the configured purge strategy.
When you purge data, the data is deleted or moved to a database schema based on the configured purge strategy. The following data is purged for users, partners, and sponsors.
  • Users - Company, company details, contact details, participant details, and user credentials.
  • Partners - All partner user details, PEM Partner Repository configurations of the partner, and activities that are rolled out to the partner.
  • Third party processors - All third party processor details.
  • Sponsors - Complete data of the sponsor and the partners of the sponsor.

If the data is archived, the data is stored in the same or different database schema per the configured purge strategy. The archived data can be shared with the user whose data is purged, if you have the mechanism to share that data.

For more information on how to run the Purge tool, see Deploy the Purge Utility.