Store Smarter: How Active Archiving

Improves PeopleSoft? Performance E X E C U T I V E B R I E F June 2002

Why Store Smarter? The problem. PeopleSoft? Solutions collect large volumes of historical data and keep all of the data online, even though much of it is rarely used. These application databases continue to grow at an accelerating rate, degrading performance, expanding maintenance windows and slowing response time on even the simplest database queries. Consequently, businesses that depend on fast access to critical data for decision support, risk losing the competitive edge they need to remain profitable. It is also difficult to complete basic tasks, like month-end closing, and the complexities of complying with legislative and financial requirements become even more challenging. The need. Today, companies that rely on mission-critical PeopleSoft applications face an increasing demand for optimum performance and scalable access to their enterprise data. However, with continued database growth, meeting these requirements has become nearly impossible.

The traditional approach. Capacity expansion and intensive database tuning provide an interim solution, but the root of the problem is not addressed. Adding faster, more powerful processors can speed access to information, but the underlying PeopleSoft databases continue to grow. What’s more, database tuning and continuous upgrades yield diminishing return on investment and merely postpone the need for a long-term solution. Why the traditional approach is no longer effective. Performance and availability. In the past, IT could count on a linear increase in capacity to maintain the service levels of growing PeopleSoft databases. However, with increasing focus on customer service, eBusiness and the Internet, performance is of the utmost priority. In addition, the accelerating growth of PeopleSoft databases has stretched maintenance and disaster recovery windows to the point where data availability is seriously threatened. Cost. Hardware upgrades are expensive and required more often. IT organizations often face multiple millions of dollars in hardware costs and software license fees when they choose hardware expansion as an interim solution. What’s more, as PeopleSoft databases continue to grow, upgrades yield less and less return and only postpone the inevitable need for a long-term solution. Many IT organizations recognize that using capacity expansion to address the problem of database growth is a tactical solution to what is really a strategic problem.

Why not reduce data volume? Removing data from overloaded PeopleSoft databases may seem like a common sense approach to controlling database growth, but it is not without challenges and risks. The major fear is that once data is no longer in the operational database, it may be difficult to quickly locate and access when needed. Some applications offer rudimentary purging capabilities, but once the data is removed it is gone forever.
Active archiving: an effective strategy. Active archiving improves database performance while maximizing the use of existing enterprise storage and processing capacity. Going well beyond the traditional approach to “archiving,” active archiving makes it possible to select and remove precise sets of seldom-used data from a production database, save that data in an Archive File, and keep it “active” for easy access whenever it is needed. Setting the “active reference data” aside reduces database overload, directly improving application response time and batch processing, while reducing or eliminating the need for additional capacity. As a result, applications operate at peak performance to support more customers and more transactions. Companies that rely on financial management and ERP applications are realizing that ongoing active archiving can provide a longterm solution to the problem of accelerating database growth: • Transferring active reference data to one or more manageable Archive Files reduces the size of large databases. • Archive Files can be researched quickly and data can be easily accessed, queried and used for reporting. Archived data may even be selectively restored on demand. • Planned increases in capacity can be deferred, often resulting in savings of millions of dollars.

Proven Active Archiving Solutions.

Princeton Softech’s Active Archive? Solutions are the first to provide proven technology for implementing an effective active archiving strategy across the enterprise. These solutions support the leading database management systems in both the mainframe and open systems environments. In addition, Active Archive Solutions are seamlessly integrated with PeopleSoft modules, such as PeopleSoft Financial Management Solutions. This powerful combination helps maximize the investment in PeopleSoft software through improved performance and availability, while reducing the total-cost-of-ownership. Comprehensive archive and restore capabilities are integrated with the PeopleSoft application. An integrated out-of-the-box solution minimizes IT involvement when implementing Active Archive Solutions. Business analysts have fast access to current and active reference data. In addition, analysts can selectively restore archived data when needed.

How active archiving works. Active Archive Solutions provide comprehensive capabilities to support any business and operational requirements for implementing active archiving. Application or site-specific active archiving policies can be defined to identify the data to be archived, for example, archiving all General Ledger transactions from 1997 to 2000. The challenge of archiving all related data is managed by Princeton Softech’s Relationship Engine?. This unique technology always archives precise subsets of related data, no matter how many tables or relationships are involved — and guarantees to keep that data referentially intact. Executive Brief – Active Archiving Improves PeopleSoft Performance 3 Because the Relationship Engine “understands” and remembers the relationships between archived and nonarchived data, the data can be stored and restored with 100% accuracy. In addition, archived data can be browsed or searched — even used to generate reports — without restoring a single row.

Enterprise active archiving offers significant benefits. Within large enterprises that rely on PeopleSoft applications, there may be different business units that can benefit from active archiving. For example, strategic planners are concerned about ROI. Business analysts depend on the performance and availability of critical financial applications. CIOs need to manage costs associated with processor capacity and data storage requirements, while the IT staff on the front lines have to deal with daily database performance issues. The benefits of active archiving translate into cost-effective operations for the entire enterprise: Optimize performance. Active archiving on a regular basis removes seldom-used data from PeopleSoft databases and improves application performance. Improve availability. PeopleSoft databases have to be taken offline periodically for maintenance. With active archiving, backup and reorganization processing takes less time because there is less non-essential data to process. Batch jobs complete faster. As a result, application availability improves significantly, and data is always accessible. Companies will also reduce the recovery time in their business continuity plans. Save money. Active archiving provides an effective long-term solution — an ongoing strategy to improve performance and availability. Existing capacity can be reallocated and expensive hardware and processor upgrades can be deferred or eliminated — maximizing storage resources and return on investment.

Princeton Softech: the Active Archive Solutions Company. Princeton Softech is the global leader in data management solutions. For more than 10 years, we’ve helped some of the world’s largest companies improve database performance, maximize existing storage capacity and test applications with breakthrough speed and quality. As a premier data management company, we’ve helped companies reclaim what is rightfully theirs — the power to manage their own data. To contact a Princeton Softech representative, or to learn more about active archiving and other Princeton Softech solutions, please visit our website: www.princetonsoftech.com. ?2002 Princeton Softech, Inc. All products or brand names are trademarks of their respective holders. (ref. no: 27683A)