ARCTOOLS for IBM i, developed by DCSoftware, provides easy to use purge and archive functionality for the IBM AS/400 (a.k.a. iSeries, i5, System/i and IBM i) platform. It can be used for traditional DDS files (typically used with traditional green-screen applications) or SQL tables (typically used for client/server or ODBC based applications). The product requires no special hardware to operate.
How it works
Creating purge and archive routines is as easy as writing a query. While the user interface looks like Query/400 or SQL, under the covers is a proprietary RPG code generator. This code generator creates proper high-level language programs to process your purges efficiently.
Features
This code generator also allows some very useful features, including the ability to schedule a purge stop-by date and time, or to stop a purge on demand. The stop-by or stop-on-demand features are very helpful to run purges in available time slots while avoiding system maintenance windows. Purges that run out of time or are stopped manually can simply be resubmitted to pick up where they left off.
ARCTOOLS also provides a very powerful and popular “throttle” feature. Purging typically involves large volumes of data. Purges that run “too fast” can cause performance issues on the machine due to logical file or index maintenance, or mirroring throughput issues. The throttle allows a purge job to be forced to slow down, thus reducing the impact on CPU or other system resources.
Optimizing Space
After purging files, files usually need to be reorganized to free up the space wasted by the deleted records. ReorgWizard™ is a related tool that most iSeries customers will find very useful. It allows files to be reorganized without locking users out of the files.
See other versions of ARCTOOLS for:
Oracle
MS SQL Server