Obliterate and export questions

[dwhite]

I have read that any oblieration can lead to errors during export. I realize that sometimes you can "get lucky" and still export without errors. But, does any obliteration always create the potential for an export error?

If I have obliterated from one repository, is it safe to export from a different repository?
If I have obliterated from one folder, is it safe to export from another folder in the same repository?

Is it best to NEVER use obliterate? It seems that an export without deleted items would serve the same purpose. Are there situations where obliterate is necessary or advisable?

[lbauer]

If I have obliterated from one repository, is it safe to export from a different repository?

Yes. Obliterate is specific to the history of a particular repository.

If I have obliterated from one folder, is it safe to export from another folder in the same repository?

That's trickier. Let's say you have File A in Folder A. You move File A to Folder B. Later, you delete and obliterate Folder A. Sometime later you want to export Folder B. However File A's history is dependent on its creation in Folder A and Folder A is gone. So the Export may fail when it tries to recreate the history. Operations like move, share, and branch complicate things because the history is connected across multiple locations.

It would probably be best just to delete items, but leave them in the database. Some users think obliterating is a solution for make the repository smaller and improving performance. However, if you're concerned about having lots of nodes in your folder tree, deleting folders/branches helps with performance in the same way obliterating them would.

Are there situations where obliterate is necessary or advisable?

Maybe if you have proprietary information or secret documents you need to destroy. But not from a Vault management perspective.

[dwhite]

In the situation you describe where we have a secret document accidentially placed in the wrong repository...

Could we delete the file,"export without deleted items" and then import to a new repository? Would this secret document be totally inaccessable to users in the new repository? Of course, we would also lose all of the history for all other deleted items.

Or...is it always safe to obliterate a single file that has been checked in once but has no other history? No shares, branches, moves, renames, etc. Since just adding the file affects the folder's history, it seems that it could cause an export error on that folder.

I just want to make sure I can always export as it seems like a useful feature.

[lbauer]

You could *probably* delete/obliterate a single item, if its history was fully contained in a single folder. We haven't specifically test this, though.

And if you didn't export deleted items, then the deleted item would not go to the new repository.

If there were deleted items you *did* want to export, I suppose you could temporarily undelete them.

[janeriko]

I have a similar question:

We currently have two repositories; "Main" and "PC". Obliterate has never been used on the PC repository but it has been used on Main. So if we ever want to export, we would be able to do so from PC but perhaps not from Main.

We now would like to have only one repository and are therefore thinking about importing the contents of PC into Main (into its own, separate, "PC" folders).

We have stopped using obliterate after reading about the obliterate/export problems, but could those previous obliterate in Main cause future exports to fail even from the "PC" folders?

[lbauer]

The reason exports fail is because the export tool needs to re-create the entire history of what is being exported. I think if you were able to import PC into Main, as long as you didn't mix together a history by sharing, moving, or branching from folders in Maine into folders in PC, you probably could still export items from PC. However we haven't tested this.

You might want to try some of this on a test machine--you can even install on a workstation just for testing.