About Using Oracle Cloud Object Storage to Store Attachments

Customers who have a large Tax Reporting database mainly due to the number of uploaded attachments should use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Object Storage to store the attachments. Using a separate storage option will allow a large reduction in the size of the LCM snapshot so the backup, download and restore steps will be more streamlined (for example, when restoring a snapshot from test to production, or when downloading a snapshot for offline storage). Another advantage is that using OCI Object Storage allows you to increase the maximum attachment size from 20 MB to 100 MB. It is a highly recommended best practice to use OCI Object Storage.

OCI Object Storage requires its own subscription and configuration so this feature is optional. If you choose to set it up, attachments are stored in OCI Object Storage going forward and existing attachments will be moved to OCI Object Storage once configured.

When you create an application using a snapshot or by cloning, and the source application uses OCI Object Storage to store attachments, the password required to access the OCI Object Storage bucket is not exported in the new application for security reasons. The recommended best practice is to separately clone your source OCI Object Storage bucket, and configure the new bucket on the new application. See Setting Up OCI Object Storage in Tax Reporting.

Note:

• Once you start using OCI Object Storage, you cannot go back to using the Tax Reporting database for these attachments.
• During cloning if the source is set to use object storage in between, then after migration, sometimes the overall statistics about the attachments on the target (OCI) doesn't match the source because of the following:
  • Orphan records: When orphan references at source (that are considered for statistics at source) are migrated, they get lost at the target system because they aren't associated with any objects. This causes a mismatch in the statistics at target when compared to source. For example, orphan references are created when an alert has comment references and the comments are deleted but the references aren't deleted at source.
  • Duplicate attachments: For duplicate attachments at source, only the distinct reference for statistics at source are considered. However, after migration, each duplicate record has its own unique reference at target because they are migrated as part of different artifacts. This causes mismatch in the statistics.

    Note:

    This is applicable only for Task Manager.