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Should I or Should I not Archive.

One thing to keep in mind you MUST keep records for at least five years, however, you do not have to keep the records within the current database. Even if you do decide to keep them there are a few things you can do to speed up access.

Before doing any form of archiving make a copy of the database.
Keep this safe and do not re-use the tape.
Use an old tape that was due to be re-cycled anyway.

Re-Organise Files

( The reorganise option is on the validation sub-menu: System Management -> Setup/Validation -> Validation )

Depending on how much editing/deleting you do there will be deleted records in your current database. These 'Free' records are doing no harm just now except using up disk space. While these days disk space is cheap it can still be beneficial to re-organise the files to re-use this. A side affect of the re-organises is it groups together record from the same animal making accessing them a lot faster.

Do you need to re-organise? - A simple way of checking is to look at the summary from your last un-attended validation (it will be in the print spooler) - look at the percentage of clinical records scanned - if it is over 80/85% then you don't need to, under it is worthwhile.

Clinical records on file 1385696  
Clinical Records scanned 1073303 ( 77.5% )

Here this database has 1.3 Million records and just over 1 million are currently in use - 77% so about 23% are 'free'. In this case yes it is worthwhile re-organising - the the Used Percentage is below 80%.

There are only two things you need to be aware of for re-organising the files:

  1. Run a vatbook BEFORE to start a re-organise.
  2. Make sure you have spare disk space, a quick way to check is at the Vet> prompt
    type df -v /u if the %used in the last column is under 50% then you will have no problem.

A re-organise takes about twice as long as a validation takes, look at the summary from earlier, 

Started at  3:01 ended  4:59
Elapsed time 01:58

This took two hours, so plan on four hours for the re-organise.

The steps are:

That's it - the system will automatically validate afterwards it's self.

What is a partial archive?

(The archive option are on the sub-menu: System Management -> Setup/Validation -> Archive Records)

Most the reports and lists on the system read all the clinical records for each animal - if you have been using the system for a while especially if you have Farm clients. The number of records can be quite large.

A partial archive alters the 'Start point' for listing records. By adjusting the start date the records are read quicker, reports don't take so long to run. You still have access to these partially archived records.

Use the Partial Archive option, enter the cut off date - usually about 5 years - let it run. The only thing you should be aware of with a partial archive is they system will 'overwrite' one record at the cut-off point. This is used to correct the balance at the archive point.

I want to do a full archive.

Archiving is NOT a one step procedure. The steps you need to carry out can be spread over a period and time and are:

Lets look at each step:

Use the 'Mark for Archive' option.

The basic archive will default to:

All dead animals not seen in the last 10 years
All animals where there are no clinical records
Animals where the age is over 20 years (see selection screen for age defaults)

For just over 100,000 animals it took about 3 mins.

The printer will print the summary and all records that are marked. At this point NO RECORDS HAVE BEEN DELETED - all the system has done is add a status code to records that meet the criteria. These all start with a number e.g. 1R is marked based on being Dead, 5R is having no records.

Look over the list, you do not have to do the next step straight away, take some time, any records you DON'T want to archive, just change/remove the status code.

Once you are happy, move to the next step:

Use the 'Archive to File' option:

This will copy all the records to a sub-directory called 'archive', put all the details into a TEXT file and then compress it save space. The Filename will be the date and time the archive took place.

The records are all stored as CSV entries making it simple to recover the records into a spreadsheet if you ever need to access them.

Then the final step 'Delete Marked Clients' - this will run through the database and mark all the animal records as 'Deleted'. While the other options will ask you a start/end date this option will do ALL records. It will only delete records where the status codes contains 1-9R and the balance is zero.

More details on archiving can be found in the on-line manuals: http://localhost/premvet/manual/pv5/ch36.html