This scenario demonstrates how to use the Archive Process, browse an Archive File, and restore selected data from an Archive File.
Using Archive to implement an Active Archiving strategy, you can easily obtain a set of referentially intact data from a production database and copy the data to an Archive File. To streamline your database, you can delete all or part of the archived data. You can delete data as part of the Archive Process, or you can defer the deletion. Deferring the deletion gives you the opportunity to review the archived data using the Browse Utility. Afterward, you can use the Delete Process to delete the desired data from the database. The archived data remains referentially intact and is easy to search or restore, if necessary.
To archive data, you run an Archive Process to select and copy data to an Archive File. The Archive Process is controlled by an Archive Request, which you create using the Archive Request Editor.
You are the database administrator for a company that sells videos to video stores nationally. The size of the production database for which you are responsible is increasing relentlessly, affecting the performance of mission-critical applications and limiting your company's ability to respond to customer needs.
In the past, there were few viable solutions to this problem, and “business as usual” often meant letting the production database continue to grow. Now, however, you want to try a new method — Active Archiving.
With Active Archiving, you can remove infrequently used data from the production database, yet keep the archived data available to search and selectively restore when needed.
Based on an evaluation of data needed for day-to-day activities, your company decides to archive orders more than two years old from the production database. To keep the archived orders in context, the archive must include the customers who placed the orders, each ordered item including unit price and description, and the order and ship dates. As a result, you will archive data in the CUSTOMERS, ORDERS, DETAILS, and ITEMS tables and copy the data to an Archive File.
After archiving, you will streamline your database by deleting archived rows in selected database tables. Specifically, you will delete archived rows from the ORDERS and DETAILS tables, because this transactional data is out-of-date and infrequently used. However, you will retain the archived rows in the CUSTOMERS and ITEMS tables, since this data is pertinent to recent and future orders. For example, the CUSTOMERS table contains master account information such as names and addresses, and the ITEMS table contains information about each product in inventory. You will delete archived rows from the ORDERS and DETAILS tables during the Archive Process.
After you delete archived ORDERS and DETAILS rows from the production database and complete the Archive Process, you will search for a customer's orders in the ORDERS table and browse the related DETAILS to verify the shipment of a specific item for the customer. To demonstrate the Restore Process, you will then search for and restore the ORDERS and related DETAILS rows to the production database.
To archive the data, you will:
The Delete Process, Browse Utility, and Restore Process are discussed in this chapter.