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RE: <tech> RE-phrase my question about long term archival of EDI
> How others using Sterling Gentran/Unix have faced this challenge;
> if there is a best-practice concerning long-term storage and
retrieval;
>
> If anyone on the list could share their experience in this area, I
would be
> glad to take the discussion off-line.
>
Generally speaking, you can archive the output of any data managers
within Gentran/Unix. (We're on the 5.3 product, moving slowly
towards 6.0.) What we have done to optimize the storage is to
archive the inbound data manager so that we have an archival copy of
the EDI, and we also archive the outbound translated file so if
there's a 'hiccough' downstream we don't necessarily have to
reprocess the whole EDI stream, with the concomitant control number
disconnects that that would cause.
I am not sure if this is a Gentran feature or something a consultant
cooked up, but our files in the $EDI_HOME/arch directory are of the
format <data-mgr>.yyyymmddhh -- so, for example, our inbound data
manager, named inis, has a record called inis.2002070907 for all
traffic received between 7 AM and 7:59 AM this morning.
With the translated output it's a little different. The final data
manager in the inbound flow contains logic to enable post-processing
on the files as necessary, and the output is placed into
different 'buckets' based upon the destination application and
transaction type. So, for example, the directory called
$EDI_HOME/gone/oas_PORD is for all purchase orders routed to
our 'OAS' application. Similarly, $EDI_HOME/gone/lep_FCST contains
all 830s and DELFORs that go to our 'LEP' application.
This functionality is complex and written by someone who has since
departed, so I sure hope it doesn't break any time soon. :-{)
Outbound files are kept 90 days and then discarded. If we need to
regen an outbound file after 90 days, we submit the EDI again. We'll
either bite the bullet and deal with the control numbers being out of
whack on production, or we run the stream on the test server and ftp
the data to the right location.
Inbound files in the arch directory we keep online for 90 days
(anything over 30 days is compressed, so all we need to do is a zcat
to retrieve it.) Over 90 days we have an external routine to move
it to tape, where it's stored for seven years. This external
routine maintains the tape catalog, so we only need to specify the
file name we want and the date range from which to extract, and the
destination.
Hope this information is helpful.
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