SETTING UP DATA MAINTENANCE

Data Maintenance is enabled via
- System Maintenance
- Data Maintenance
- Select the Reduce Data Tab
- Tick the box Enable Data Maintenance box
- Click save
This will set Data Maintenance run at Midnight every night on your server.
Removing data from the data base can slow your server down to a crawl and
by nature can prevent access to the most used tables (parts) of your system.
Midnight has been chosen to have minimal impact on your system
operation.

WHAT CAN BE MAINTAINED

For each of the maintenance items you can choose to maintain the data in
the following way:
1) None - This means that no reduction of the data will take place
2) Reduce to a set date - Your data will be reduced until the date you set.
3) Keep number of days - Your data will be constantly reduced to keep
this many days worth of data.

Currently Data Maintenance will remove the following items:
1) Customer Delivery History (Newsagencies)
This is the detail of customer deliveries on statements and the delivery
history entries as seen in Customer Maintenance and Customer Orders.
Data Maintenance will remove these single entries and combine them into
one customer transaction for the month. This is done is a way that old
customer statements will still continue to print.
2) Hold Scripts (Pharmacies)
When transferred from the dispense system, scripts are available for
retrieval at the register. When they are processed they then become either a
register sale or an account bookup. At this point the hold script entry can be
removed.
3) Saved and updated invoices.
Stock received allows invoices to be saved for later retrieval, allowing you
to see the exact details of what was entered. Once the invoice is updated it
becomes a creditor transaction and it is the creditor transaction that is used
for the sales recording purposes. If you no longer wish to view the entered
invoice, it can be removed.
4) XChangeIT invoices (Newsagencies)
XChangeIT DD2 files are stored for retrieval in stock received. Via Convert
XChangeIT invoices they are processed and they become both saved
invoices and creditor transactions. The XChangeIT records are used when
creating sales files and EDI returns forms but after that they are no longer
needed.

OPERATION

Once setup Data Maintenance will continue to run each night reducing old
records from your database according to the schedule you have set.
The maximum number of records that are removed each night has been
limited to ensure the continued operation and stability of your system.
For customers who have been using Posbrowser for a number of years, Data
Maintenance may take a while to reach the limits you have set.

REPORTING

Data Maintenance has two reports available.
You can access these via:
System Maintenance
- Data Maintance
- Select the Reports tab

Maintenance History Report
The Maintenance History report is intended to show you the progress of
Data Maintenance.
- Select the date range
- Select the type of Maintenance Item you wish to report on
- Click Show Report.
This report will detail:
- The date and time Data Maintenance ran
- The Item that was maintained
- The number of entries that were affected
- The type of change that was made, such as removed records.
- This report will also total up the number of changes that
have been made.
Database Size and Maintenance Report
The Database Size and Maintenance report is used to determine
- How large your database is
- How much data is currently in your database
- How much of it can be removed via Data Maintenance,
given your current settings.
Using this report you will gain an indication of how much redundant data is
contained within your system.
You should not run this report during busy trading times as it needs to
access some of the largest tables in your database and depending on the
speed of your server, may cause your system to slow down while it is
running.

MULTI-SHOP OPERATION

For customers with more than one shop, Data Maintenance is designed to be
set up and run on the publisher site only. Any changes will be transferred to
the subscriber shops automatically via replication.
All reporting for Data Maintenance must also be done at the publisher site.
The maintenance history report may also show entries where Data
Maintenance failed with an error 548.
This is because Data Maintenance cannot insert the records it needs to and is
designed to stop. The problem will be fixed with the next replication cycle
and Data Maintenance will continue the next evening as expected.