JD Edwards Purge and Archive Strategy

Purging and archiving in JD Edwards can be a daunting task.  There are some internal reports for purging and archiving in separate modules of the application, however finding the documentation to support these can be a difficult task.  Another challenge to using the internal purge and archive reports is ensuring that the parent/child relations are appropriate and done together. Our partner Klick IT has a solution in Purge-It that helps make the purge and archive process smooth and easy.  Here is some information from our partner.

 

Archive Automation: bringing automation to JD Edwards archiving.

 

  • How do you move a mountain of JD Edwards data?
  • How do you free up your IT resources from the routine task of archiving?
  • How do you consistently remove more data from your JD Edwards system than is being added?

The answer lies in a simple change of mindset around how you approach an archive and purge project.

How to move a mountain of data

It’s likely that you’ve spent many years or even decades accumulating data in your JDE ERP system.  Of course, this is the purpose of your ERP system, in its most basic form.  In the same way that you have spent many years collecting the data, the answer for how to move a mountain of data is to move it one stone at a time.  In other words, you take the huge amount of data and spread out the archiving task over a large amount of time.

This may sound strange because you may be thinking, but I don’t have the luxury of large amounts of time to tackle my data tangle.  However, this is where the change of mindset comes in to play.  If you remove or at the very least minimise human intervention in your archiving project, then the pressure of time is removed.  Instead, by automating the routine task of archiving, you can have a JD Edwards system that is self-maintaining.

How to free up your IT resource from the routine task of archiving

Date Offsets in Purge-it! are the answer.  Date Offsets are a feature of the software which allow you to automate your archiving.

Purge-it! is an end-to-end archiving solution that works within JD Edwards.  The solution is renowned in the JD Edwards community for being easy to use as well as a safe and secure choice for archiving and purging historical data.

Date Offsets is a feature of Purge-it! software that doesn’t exist within JD Edwards.

Dynamic Date Offsets automatically recalculate as they are used.  Once the parameters are configured, you do not need to change them.  Starting positions can be varied and then offset from that point. The dates then move with time.  For example, the start could be today minus 30 days, today minus 3 years or the end of a fiscal year minus 3 fiscal years.

Most JD Edwards systems contain huge numbers of records that have built up gradually over time.  Archive Automation works by breaking this huge amount of data down into multiple small standalone jobs.  Each archive job is so small that it runs very quickly – usually in a matter of minutes.  It will not put any strain on a system that may already be under pressure.  It will happen automatically in the background without any manual intervention.

How to consistently remove more data from a JDE system than is being added

In the normal operation of a business, data is constantly being added to and stored in your JDE system.  That is its most basic and fundamental purpose.

One of the key success criteria behind Archive Automation, is that not only does it remove the data that is added today and every day in the life of the system, but it also simultaneously and continuously removes data from multiple earlier years.

All the while, there is no system downtime.  Month, quarter and year end processes go ahead as planned.  System maintenance is not impacted.  The release schedule continues.  System performance is unaffected.

Running and completing multiple individual small archive jobs every day for a period of months, makes it possible to lift and shift huge quantities of data out of the system painlessly.

What will the impact be on the user experience?

Gradually and steadily your JD Edwards system will speed up.  Users will notice that reports are running faster.  The user experience will be greatly enhanced.

Automation will free up resources and expertise.  Not only will the task of archiving be in hand but also your JD Edwards system will be responding well to its users.  Individuals will be able to focus on value-add tasks within your organization that benefit more from human judgement, thinking and intervention.

The overall health and performance of your ERP system will improve noticeably with quantifiable benefits.

8 business benefits of Archive Automation

  1. Proactive approach to archiving and data management.
  2. Frees up IT talent to focus on management, strategy and innovation.
  3. Minimal disruption.  System performance is unaffected.  Zero downtime.
  4. Removes data at a consistently faster rate than it is added.
  5. Only relevant and essential data is kept in the Production environment.
  6. Smaller JD Edwards table sizes.  Automatic re-indexing greatly improves system performance.
  7. Change in attitude towards archiving:  Meaningful Data Retention Policy is created and followed.
  8. The JD Edwards system becomes self-maintaining.