Purging cycle instance workflow data
Updated: 2009-04-30
After a cycle is closed, and after a certain period of time, you might want to purge the workflow data that is associated with old cycle instance data. You can trigger this purge task from the Delete CycleInstance action in Planning Business Modeler.
This deletion is a cascade deletion. It starts from a specific cycle instance date, and deletes all related data, including assignments data and submission history data.
Specifically, it removes the following types of data:
All related job instance data
Cycle instance data
All related assignments data. This includes the deletion of AssignmentDependency, ApproverList, ReviewerList, NotificationUsers, Submissions, DirtyPartitions, then Assignments, and Workbooks table.
Warning
The scope and effect of this deletion process must be considered carefully and therefore must be used with caution. Back up your data before you perform this task. The deletion is permanent; it cannot be reversed.
The Workbooks table has a column named StorageUrl. It contains the Microsoft Office Excel workbook location and file name. When you perform a Delete CycleInstance action to clean a workbook row in the Workbooks table, you might have to free the space that was associated with the deleted workbook rows.
For example, the query:
select StorageUrl from Workbooks
shows StorageUrl has such location: \\Machine1\BizWorkflow\Alpine_Ski_House\Form Templates\.
By looking at this directory, you find some Excel files that contain “Manufacturing” that are no longer used by the Workbooks table. Run the following query to see if those Excel files are still used.
select * from workbooks where StorageUrl like '%Manufacturing %'
If the results show those Excel files are no longer used in the Workbooks table, you can manually remove those Excel files from that directory to free up space.
Notice that some rows in the Workbooks table have NULL in the StorageUrl column and some have a file share location. This is because when you do a submission from PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel, you can select the Send form with submission option. If you select this option when you submit a change list, the workflow form file is saved in the file share that is defined in those forms locations when you perform the Create Application task from Planning Administration Console. This storage can grow very fast because you do the submission with the attached form. It is important, therefore, that you clean up those form files from that file share folder, along with cleaning up the database table by performing Delete CycleInstance action. The default value for the Send form with submission option is off.
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