Maintaining Data Records

As a system administrator, you reorganize and archive data such as execution data (formerly known as statistics), reports, messages and comments at regular intervals to guarantee the optimum performance of your Automation Engine system and to comply with legal, audit and reporting obligations. You have several options to maintain the data in your system:

Using the AE REST API, see AE REST API - Database Maintenance
Through AWI, see Archiving Operational Data
Using the DB Utilities, see Utilities
Through ILM, see ILM - Information Lifecycle Management

Important!
- The Utilities support all databases; ILM supports only MS SQL and Oracle (Enterprise Editions with Partitioning Feature).
- ILM partitioning neither reorganizes object versions nor deletes objects. You must run the Automation Engine Utilities for these purposes.

Archiving data through AWI or the REST API has important advantages:

No additional installation is necessary.
No direct access to the database is needed.
Easy and straightforward way to archive data.
The archiving process can be automated and scheduled.

As for the Utilities and ILM, this table describes the benefits of each method:

Criteria	Utilities	ILM
Administrative effort	Low	Higher
Usage	Ideal for smaller AE databases	Ideal for high volume AE databases
Performance	With large amounts of records, the maintenance run can burden the AE system	ILM achieves short maintenance runs that are almost independent from the amount of data
Maintenance time and relevant settings	Individual configuration per Client is possible	Same configuration for all Clients in the system
Archiving	Using the AEDB Archive utility	Using the AEDB Archive utility or partition backups
Viewing archived data records	Using the Archive Browser	Using the Archive Browser or the AEDB Reporting Tool utility Note: 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 execution data records because they are both in the same partition