How You Delete Physical Records from Date-Effective Objects

The effect of deleting a physical record from a date-effective object depends on the record's position in the object's history.

Consider the date-effective object, which has three physical records, shown in this table.

Physical Record	Effective Start Date	Effective End Date	Attribute Value
3	15 August, 2022		C
2	30 October, 2021	14 August, 2022	B
1	10 June, 2020	29 October, 2021	A

Intermediate Records

If you delete physical record two, where the attribute value is B, then the object is as shown in this table after the deletion.

Physical Record	Effective Start Date	Effective End Date	Attribute Value
2	15 August, 2022		C
1	10 June, 2020	14 August, 2022	A

If physical records exist both before and after the deleted record, then the deletion adjusts the dates of the surrounding records automatically. The effective end date of the previous record is now the day before the effective start date of this record. This change closes the gap in the object's effective dates.

First or Only Records

In most cases, you can't delete the first or only physical record.

If you can delete the first physical record, then the object exists from the effective start date of the next physical record (30 October, 2010 in this example). If only one physical record exists, then deleting that record is the same as deleting the object.

Final Records

If you delete the final physical record, then the deletion removes the effective end date automatically from the previous physical record (14 August, 2011, in this example).