Administration Guide > Database > Database Maintenance > Maintaining Data Records

Maintaining Data Records

Maintaining a databaseA database is an organized collection of data including relevant data structures. includes that data records are regularly archived and reorganized (statistics, reports, messages etc.). The involved process has direct impact on the size of the AE database and positively affects the performance of your AE system.

For maintaining your data records, you can either use the utilities or partitioning with ILM. The table shown below lists the differences between these two methods:

For	Utilities	Partitioning with ILMStands for Information Lifecycle Management, which refers to a wide-ranging set of strategies for administering storage systems on computing devices.
Supported databases	MS SQL Server, Oracle and DB2	MS SQL Server and Oracle (Enterprise Editions with Partitioning Feature required)
Administrative effort	Low	Higher
Usage	Ideal for smaller AE databases (the more executions per time the longer takes the maintenance run)	Ideal for complex AE databases (short maintenance run almost independent from number of job executions per time)
Performance	The maintenance run can burden the AE system if there are numerous data records.	Changing the partition burdens the AE system only marginally.
Maintenance time and relevant settings	Individual configurationA set of constituent components that make up a system. This includes information on how the components are connected including the settings applied. per client is possible	Same configuration for all clients of the AE system
Archiving	Via the utility AEDB Archive	Via the utility AEDB Archive or Backup of partitions
Viewing archived data records	Via the Archive Browser	Via the Archive Browser or the AE DB Reporting Tool It is also possible to transfer partitions to a separate database and use utilities.
Keeping the last n data records per object	Possible	Not possible
Reports	Reports can be deleted before statistical records are deleted	Reports are reorganized together with the corresponding statistical records because they are both in the same partition.

Use exclusively utilities:

if just a few tasks run in your AE system. This includes that there are fewer statistical records, reports and messages.

Use partitioning with ILM:

if lots of tasks run in your AE system. This includes that there are many data records or
if you do not want to archive the data records. Partitions can be deleted quickly and easily.

It is still necessary to run the utilities to reorganize object versions and deleted objects as they are not covered by partitioning with ILM.