This section provides general guidelines and information related to archiving data, including:

Customers can use the Oracle Utilities Information Lifecycle Management product to mark records eligible for “archiving” or use a custom process. Initial measurement (IMD) records should only be purged by archiving/dropping old partitions/subpartitions (for ILM, a subpartition can be dropped/archived when all of the records within the subpartition have the ILM_ARCH_SW='Y). To prevent corruption of the object model, IMD records should not be deleted using any other method outside of the application. Please note, customers should perform adequate tests to ensure that removing IMD records does not adversely impact custom code or meter data operations.

It is recommended to follow the archiving strategy defined in Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management Database Administrator’s Guide. Refer to the Sample SQL for Periodic Maintenance appendix. This appendix describes the process of archiving, dropping partitions and restoring partitions, including the following general recommendations:

The reading value (if available) and a combined multiplier (created from multipliers defined for the measurement's measuring component type and install event) are now stored for measurements in the final Measurement (D1-MSRMT) table. Since these values are now stored on the final Measurement table, customers can archive IMD records from the Initial Measurement Data (D1-IMD) table. The IMD record is not used for product cancel rebill processes. The D1-IMD table could be up to 55% of the total database size so removing these records will materially impact storage requirements.

Customers should only archive IMD records that are no longer needed, e.g., no longer working exceptions for that period or not needed for audit purposes. Some customer use the IMD table as an audit record of readings received. As an alternative, customers may choose to store the raw head-end system files on the file system to reduce storage costs and license costs.