Have You Resorted to Database Archiving in Your Enterprise? The Approach Matters!

Many IT managers and decision-makers are resorting to information lifecycle management (ILM) solutions and different database archiving solutions. In the archiving process, historical data can be transferred to an offline production environment and retained in read-only format till it is ultimately disposed. This practice of data management is said to be crucial for the implementation of ILM.

Database archiving solution’s prime driver is enhancement of application performance and availability. Companies tend to use database archiving for meeting regulatory compliance procedures or for reducing the overall cost. Companies have chalked out different ways to implement different archiving methodologies in their enterprise and some strategies bring disadvantageous results:

1) Some enterprises consider building database archiving software themselves but the time and labor involved tend to eat into their budgets. For instance, some enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications often consist of thousands and thousands of interconnected database tables which make classification of the processes a tedious task to implement.

2) Sometimes it happens that companies have inbuilt archiving features within their enterprise software programs. These usually solve archiving needs of a single application only but cannot be scaled for multiple databases and platforms.
3) The functionality of native database tools is limited to a certain extent and does not have the ability automate archiving. Conversely, these tools might even increase the complexity of the database.

It has been assessed by many analysts and concluded that the best solution for archiving of database information is the enterprise approach. An enterprise-level database archiving system can redress the problems faced due to improper data management or data explosion in the IT organization.

ArchivePlus, the Database Archive & Purge Solution, created by Indusa Technical Corp., boosts performance across your enterprise database. Built to address the most demanding challenges of data growth, ArchivePlus solves performance issues and compliance requirements with its archiving and purging technology. It helps in migrating data from live production databases to database archives, while managing the integrity and accessibility of information in those archives.

At the same time, the solution takes care of not providing access to critical information to unauthorized users to maintain the integrity of the data. ArchivePlus — the enterprise database archiving solution can also help speed up application performance. Also the migration depends on specific business rules and relationships which make the archived data accessible as needed. With the help of ArchivePlus solution, users can archive/copy the data in either Oracle/MS - SQL Server or XML. When data is archived/ copied in XML format, the solution helps to encrypt the data for security purpose.

Oracle Database Archiving Solutions — the Implementation and Management

Database archiving is an integral part of enterprise database solutions. Oracle databases are today handling terabytes of data, in some cases even petabytes of data. In most cases, data is not deleted or updated regularly which leads to the inflating the size of the database in the long run. Now the problem with enterprises is not saving on disk space, but protecting corporate data for longer periods of time through data retention software for meeting regulatory requirements. But the retention should not come in the way of performance. Archiving of data helps in information lifecycle management wherein along with optimum system performance; retention of data is assured, along with quick and efficient restoration.

The company has to first assess the amount of active data that is present in the database while starting out with Oracle database archiving implementation. Risks associated with database archiving solutions are:

· Escalating costs due to improper database handling
· Loss of relevant and critical data
· Huge demand and responsibility for database damages
· Non-compliance with SLAs during backup and recovery process
· Manipulation of data due to improper archiving.

While it may seem trivial that to select information from one data source and put them in another database, it is not as easy as it seems. A perfect data retention software guarantees that the data is intact and all relationships are in place. Most databases also define referential integrity constraints; hence it is very important that all of that data is extracted keeping in view of those constraints. Relationships should be mentioned in the archive so that after their restore, it is easy to use the data again.

Operationally, it is important to remove rows out the production database and keep it in the archive. There are different row removal options like SQL Delete, Truncate, CTAS (Create Table as Select), and Oracle Partitioning. Post-deletion, a large number of rows would have been reviewed from a table which leads to queries’ execution faster and faster.

Database archiving solutions are critical for the optimum performance of every Oracle enterprise database and should be planned at the start much like disaster recovery. Due to data explosion, most applications will require cleaning of rarely accessed data from transactional and operational databases either for meeting compliance demands, for internal business requirements or for boosting application performance. The data can be retained as and when needed in an archive or purged by applying a discard policy.

To delete a huge amount of data from Oracle tables, one should explore many considerations. The goal of Oracle database archiving solutions is to take out data from the database and then optimize the resulted transactional and operational data so that the database can perform better.