Archive Power: Faster Systems, Happier Teams!
Over time, PowerShift systems can accumulate years of transaction history. While retaining historical data is important, keeping all of that information in your active transaction files can affect system performance.
Why Archiving Matters
PowerShift archive programs provide a way to keep active files manageable while preserving access to your historical information. By reducing the size of active transaction files, archiving can improve day-to-day processing speed — particularly for inquiries and reports that scan large amounts of data.
Choose the Right Retention Window
The first step is to determine how much transaction history you really need in your active files. For example, you may decide that keeping one year of sales orders in the active files provides the right balance between accessibility and performance. If your system currently contains several years of transactions, we recommend archiving 10,000 or fewer transactions at a time — this may require running the archive programs multiple times to reach your desired retention period.
Schedule Archives During Low-Activity Periods
Archive programs can affect files across multiple functional areas and may require significant system resources. Running them during busy periods can impact other users. For this reason, archives are best performed during periods of low system activity. The PowerShift Job Scheduler (JOBS) enables you to automate these processes, allowing archives to run during evenings, weekends, or other convenient maintenance windows.
Make Archiving an Ongoing Process
Once active files are reduced to your desired retention window, consider establishing a regular archive schedule. For example, automating monthly or quarterly archiving through JOBS can prevent active files from continually growing and help maintain consistent system performance over time.
Update Reports and Inquiries
When you do need to include historical data, simply select the Include history option in PowerShift inquiries and reports. If your company uses ODBC queries, Report Generator reports, or other reporting tools, custom reports and queries may need to be updated to include history files if historical information is required. This helps ensure that your reporting remains complete and accurate.
A Little Maintenance Can Go a Long Way
Archiving is one way to help keep your PowerShift system operating efficiently. By establishing a reasonable retention period, running archives during low-activity periods, and automating the process through JOBS, you can keep active files lean while retaining access to historical data.
The Archive Apps
The ARC menu (available in PowerShift 4.20.028 and later) lists archive programs, including:
| Transfer Archive (TEX) | RMA Archive (RMAX) | Workorderless Receiver Archive (WEX) |
| Sales Order Archive (OEX) | Sales Commission Archive (SCEX) | AP Transaction Archive (NEX) |
| AR Transaction Archive (REX) | PO-Receiver Archive (VEX) | Inventory-to-MRB Archive (IMRBX) |
Purge Programs
Purge programs are also listed on the ARC menu. Unlike archiving, when data is purged, it is erased and no longer accessible. Some PowerShift files are necessarily managed by purge programs. One example is the Material History (MH) file displayed by Material History Inquiry (MHI). If your material history file has never been purged, it contains every inventory transaction ever recorded — or at least every transaction since you first installed PowerShift.
Like archiving, purging no-longer-relevant data is an integral part of database management. Keeping every record forever can clutter inquiries, slow reporting, and hide the information that actually matters.
To find out more about how archiving or purging outdated transaction detail will impact your PowerShift system, or if you'd like us to assist in setting up archive/purge job streams to automate these or other tasks, contact helpdesk. We're here to help!
