Retention of Summary Table entries

Answer

When the set summaryretention command is issued, updating the number of days to retain summary table information, the effect is not immediate. Setting the value to some number of days less than the current setting does not immediately cause all entries outside this new number of days to not be available. A select * from summary will still return all the entries from the prior numbers of days set in the summaryretention value.

The summary table is pruned to the new summaryretention setting when the activity log pruning is performed. This is normally a once daily process that occurs on the server around midnight. While there are no messages issued explicitly stating that the summary table is being pruned. The ANR2102I and ANR2103I messages indicating that the activity log has been pruned is an indication that the server thread has also pruned the summary table. When the set summaryretention command is issued reducing the summary table retention time, pruning of this table is not done until the activity log deletion thread is run. The ANR2102I/ANR2103I indicate that this thread has run and the summary table pruning should have occurred.

Note that once the summary table is pruned all prior entries are gone. Increasing the summaryretention value will not bring back or make available any prior entries. Increasing the summaryretention value will only allow more days entries to be retained in the future.