Purging Data

Over time, your Plant Applications database can accumulate an enormous amount of data. For a variety of reasons, you may find that you need to occasionally purge some of your data. You may be required by law to retain data for a certain time period and then purge it rather than archive it.

Release 6.1 of Plant Applications provided a Unified Manufacturing Database (UMDB) to combine a Proficy SOA database employing an S95 data model with a Plant Applications database. Data can be purged in light of the following scenarios:

• If running with a Plant Applications database, use the Plant Applications Database Purge utility to purge data.  

• If running with a UMDB, use the SOA database purge utility to purge data in the S95 data model.  Use the Plant Applications Database Purge utility to purge Plant Application data.  

Plant Applications Database Purge is a utility that enables you to purge your unwanted data. You can purge data by table, event based data associated with units, and time-based data associated with variables. After you configure a purge routine, you can save the configuration for re-use. You can also export and import a saved purge configuration. An online purge option is available.

With Plant Applications 6.2 SP3 SIM 1503, a new Purge client can be installed as a stand-alone client. Use this client if you want to purge TaskInstance data as described in What Data is Purged.

Customers using previous releases of Plant Applications will continue to use the Plant Applications Purge utility. For Plant Applications 6.0 and higher, purging SOA data from a UMDB is a two-step process involving the Plant Applications and SOA databases.

The software along with additional information about purges is available at the GE Support Site, https://digitalsupport.ge.com. Refer to the Important Product Information document for information about releases.

Important issues

There are three very important issues you must be aware of before you begin purging data.

• It is important to understand that the purge permanently removes your data and it cannot be recovered. To minimize the risk of losing data, you may wish to create a back-up of your database prior to purge. (The SOA purge utility backs up the data and does not delete it.)

• You must ensure that the Plant Applications Manager service is stopped before beginning the purge. To prevent the data purge from running slowly, it is recommended that no clients attempt to connect to the Plant Applications database during the purge. Therefore, it is best to schedule the data purge when your site has an extended period of downtime.

IMPORTANT: Any client who opens Excel and has the Plant Applications Add-in for Excel installed will automatically attempt a connection to the Plant Applications database.

• It is important to note that purging data reduces the amount of used space in the database; it does not reduce the size of the database. For instructions on shrinking the size of the database, consult your SQL Server documentation.

Supported Versions

The new Purge client is supported by all versions of Plant Applications beginning with 6.2 SP3 SIM 1403.

See Also

• For a description of the user interface and the various options, see the topic Purge Configuration dialog box.

• For instructions on purging data from tables, see the topic Purge data for selected tables.

• For instructions on purging event-based data, see the topic Purge event-based data for selected units.

• For instructions on purging time-based data, see the topic Purge time-based data for selected variables.

• For a list of tables from which data are purged, see the topic What data is purged?

• For instructions about starting a saved purge configuration, see the topic Start a data purge.