Overview
Background
The Finance system has been in place for over 15 years and in that time data has not been systematicaly purged from it. There is now a significant quantity of obsolete data in the database. ABS provide standard purging routines (such as ACTRD8) which Finance would like to make use of in order to purge obsolete data. These routines do not, however, back up or archive all purged data. Finance would like to develop a standard support procedure making use of the standard ABS purging routines In order to archive purged data so that confidence can be gained that only obsolete data is being purged. The archived data would be kept for two years to allow Finance to purge all obsolete data while mainting an archive of that purged data to check against.
Finance would like to make use of the ACTRD8 standard purging process provided by ABS and have already undertaken some work on this in the development environment. However to progress this to TEST and LIVE requires support from IS Applications including agreeing/documenting a roll back procedure and an archiving process.
The purpose of this project is to deliver an purging methodology which can be managed via IS support in order to safely and securely purge obsolete records from eFinancials in future.
In order to clarify the scope the project team will first carry out research and development work to understand how the existiung ABS purging routines work. An analysis review will be held at which the scope, estimate and project plan will be re-evaluated and the resources required to deliver the business requirements will be confirmed,
Scope
- Implement a standard ABS purging procedure based on the ABS ACTRD8 routine and develop a standard IS applications support procedure which may be used as other records/transaction types require to be purged from the system.
- Prove purging procedure works in LIVE by testing one transaction type.
- Provide a suitable process to archive purged data as part of a regular support task.
- Provide a simple process to query archived data which may be via BOXI.
- Investigate appropriate roll-back procedure to be used in the event that a purge must be immediately reversed.
- Enable FIS staff to test purging routines other than ACTRD8 on DEV and TEST.
Out of Scope
- As this project will remove one transaction type from eFinancials, any positive effect on performance due to removing old data is not likely to be measurable.
- This project will deliver a purging/arching process be based on the ACTRD8 routine and will not deliver a method of archiving data purged by any other routine.
- Involvement of IS applications staff in purging the audits table.
- The archiving method delivered will not require future-proofing for more than two years.
- Any requirement for reloading purged data from the archive into efinancials would be undertaken by ABS and a method for this will not be part of this project.
Objectives
To enable Finance and IS Applications to safely and securely purge and archive data from the live eFinancials environment using a standardised support task.
Deliverables
| Deliverable | Description | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Documented standard operating procedure for purging specified eFinancials data. | M |
| 2 | Method to store purged eFinancials data for later retrieval. | M |
| 3 | Documented standard operating procedure for archiving purged eFinancials data. | M |
| 4 | Provision of agreed User Acceptance Test plan. | M |
| 5 | Testing of purging and archiving procedures within eFinancials against User Acceptance Test plan. | M |
| 6 | Implementation of ABS fixes to the DEV, TEST and LIVE environments as required. | M |
| 7 | Simple process for querying archived data. | HD |
| 8 | Proof of concept based on delivered standard operating procecure by archiving one of the ledgers/sub-ledgers in the LIVE environment. | M |
| 9. | Document results of purging routine testing, including any issues reported to ABS. | HD |
| 10. | A rollback procedure for immediate reversal of a purge event, to be carried out by IS Applications. | M |
Benefits
Volume of data held in eFinancials LIVE database reduced.
Reporting in LIVE improved by removal of irrelevant data from efinancials.
Time to refresh DEV and TEST eFinancials database reduced.
Success Criteria
- Delivery of a purging and archiving methodology operating in the live environment which supports the purging of any records from eFinancials without impacting system integrity and which can be used at any pre-planned time to perform record purging..
- Purging of records on eFinancials does not affect the operational information needed by the sales or purchase ledgers and information is still summarised in the general ledger
- Successful reconciliation of data purged to ensure security of records archived.
- The purging of a set of records from eFinancials which proves the process.
- Provide mechanism for querying and reporting on archived transations.
- Testing of all purging programmes within the eFinancials DEV environment and recording of any issues noted.