Introduction to Archive

The Archive component of the IBM® InfoSphere™ Optim™ solutions allows you to extract sets of relational data from one or more databases and store the data for future use.

The Optim solutions manage enterprise data throughout every stage of the information lifecycle and enable your company to assess, classify, subset, archive, store, and access enterprise application data. Using the archiving features, you can

The Optim test data management capabilities provide an efficient alternative to database cloning, allowing you to create development and testing environments that are sized appropriately.

Optim helps you achieve these benefits with the following components: Archive, Move, Edit, and Compare. This manual describes the Archive component.

Archive provides everything you need to create and manage archives of relationally intact data from databases with any number of tables, interconnected with any number of DBMS and application‑managed relationships, regardless of their complexity.

After creating an Archive File, Archive selectively removes data from the production database, according to your instructions, to maximize database performance and response time. An indexing feature allows you to quickly search Archive Files for needed information and, if necessary, restore all or a precisely selected, referentially intact, portion of the data.

Archive allows you to introduce application-specific logic into your archiving operation, thereby integrating archiving with your applications. The Archive Actions allow you to define and execute custom SQL statements or calls to a stored procedure at pre-defined points in the Archive and Restore Processes. For example, you might instruct Archive to call a routine you have written that updates a column with a value each time it deletes a row from your production database. Your application can then use this value to determine if a customer's data has been archived.

Archiving data with Archive is a simple two-step process. You first create an Access Definition to specify the tables and relationships that define the set of referentially intact data to be archived. In the Access Definition, you also indicate any data to be deleted from the production database after archiving, set up indexing parameters, and define Archive Actions. In the second step, Archive copies the data described in the Access Definition to an Archive File, executes appropriate actions, creates indexes used subsequently to find archived data, and deletes the selected data from the database.

The powerful, yet safe, delete feature resolves the problem of deleting production data. Using standard facilities for all operations, Archive quickly and accurately deletes all or a portion of the archived data. For example, you might want to archive data for customers that have been inactive for the past year. You can create an Archive File of all data pertaining to the inactive customers and delete only the order and payment history from the production database, leaving intact the master account information, such as name and address.

Search facilities allow you to search Archive Files, specifying criteria to narrow the search. Search results can be presented in an interactive display, allowing you to browse archived data without having to restore it to your production system, a method useful in many situations – for example, to answer customer inquiries.

If archived data must be restored, Archive can reassemble data from hundreds of tables (across platforms, if necessary), identify the pertinent set of related rows, and restore them. The Restore Process allows you to restore archived data to the production database or to a separate database and accommodates data model changes during the restoration. In addition, you can find or restore data using criteria that differ completely from that used to create the archive.

For organizations that have developed a comprehensive archiving strategy, Archive and Restore Processes can be automated, with archiving occurring on a regularly scheduled basis and restoration triggered by applications that provide the criteria for data to be restored.

Archive addresses a critical operational need for organizations with large, complex databases. Old data can be archived in a precise manner and production databases optimized for peak performance. Archived data can be browsed or selectively restored as needed. With Archive, an enterprise can maximize its investment in its applications and operational platform. At the same time, the level of service is maximized because production database searches and response times are minimized. Programmers and DBAs are not required to spend hours writing and debugging complex archive and one-time restoration programs.

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