archiving

[bwhite]

We have several years of data in our 92 GB database and I'm thinking that we probably don't need all this in our active DB.
How do you recommend that we archive older items?

Thanks,
Brad.

[lbauer]

What's your objective -- reduce the physical size of the sgvault database file? Remove folders/branches you no longer need? Move folders from view so they don't clutter up the folder tree?

[bwhite]

What's your objective -- reduce the physical size of the sgvault database file?

Yes.

Remove folders/branches you no longer need? Move folders from view so they don't clutter up the folder tree?

No.

I'm thinking something like "anything more than 2 years old and more than X revisions back," say 10 or 20 revisions just to make absolutely sure we catch everything, can be archived. Moved into a separate database so that they are accessible, but with some effort. Seems like that would have to speed up the database substantially since we have more than 10 years of data.

That's just for code. We also put several exe's in Vault for projects that are not build on the build server. We could probably archive most of those as well. We really only use the latest version. So we could keep, say, the last 20 versions in the live DB and everything else is archived. I assume this should help a lot, since some of these are very active projects and binaries aren't stored as efficiently as text.

For reference, this 92 GB database took 12 GB in SS. Has grown less than 1 GB since conversion.

Thanks,
Brad.

[lbauer]

Vault does not have a way to archive off only certain versions of a folder. So it wouldn't be possible to archive off just the last 20 versions.

To reduce the size of the database, you could delete unused labels, and delete and obliterate unused folders after you have made a copy of the database for archival purposes. It's also possible to export folders to an archive file that could be imported at a future date.

That said, all of these actions are timeconsuming and may not be give you the results you want. Plus obliterating destroys history and can cause problems with exports in the future.

One thing you may want to consider is to get the latest version into a new repository and used the old repository for historical reference until such time as you can do without the old repository. In the short term, this will increase the size of your database somewhat, but in the long term, you can eventually delete the old repository and have a streamlined repository and database.

[bwhite]

Vault does not have a way to archive off only certain versions of a folder. So it wouldn't be possible to archive off just the last 20 versions.

To reduce the size of the database, you could delete unused labels,

Looks like we'll have to go at this backwards.

I don't have very many folders that I want to delete. Even if the project isn't currently active, that is still the latest deployed version.
So, I'm stuck with archiving just the oldest stuff (over 3 years) from each project.

I have to make a copy of this database anyway to move it over to our new server.
So, I'll leave the original as our archive, and then trim from the new copy.

Do I need to delete the labels one at a time, or is there a way to delete everything from a folder before
a given label or date?

Thanks,
Brad.

[lbauer]

Do I need to delete the labels one at a time, or is there a way to delete everything from a folder before
a given label or date?

Again, there's no way to delete just some transactions in history, except for labels. To delete labels, right click on a folder and select Show Labels. In the Show Labels results, you can select multiple labels, right-click and choose Delete.

[bwhite]

Sounds like that should work.
I'll let you know in a few weeks how it went.

Thanks,
Brad.

[lbauer]

OK, we'll wait to hear from you.