Case archiving and purging overview
Use case archiving to archive and purge cases to improve the performance of your cloud-based instance of Pega Platform. Understand how case archiving and purge works to effectively plan and perform case archiving and purge.
Case hierarchy requirements for case archiving and purge
Case hierarchy requirements fall under the following categories of case structures:- Stand-alone case
- This type of case contains neither a child nor a parent with a corresponding case type that uses an archival policy. You must set an archival policy on the corresponding case type. Pega Platform can archive stand-alone cases if the case has been resolved for at least as long as the archival policy.
- Case hierarchy
- This category is a case unit that contains parent cases, child cases, or
both. Pega Platform performs a case archival policy on
the entire hierarchy. You must set an archival policy for the top-level
case. The case type of the top-level case of the hierarchy determines the
archival policy of the whole hierarchy. Pega Platform can
archive all cases in the hierarchy if they meet the following conditions:
- The top-level case has been resolved for at least as long as its archival policy.
- All sub-level parent and child cases are resolved:
- Sub-level parent and child cases do not need to have an archival policy defined.
- Sub-level parent and child cases can be resolved anytime before the archival job.
If the case structure does not meet these conditions, the archival job cannot process that case structure.
| Top-level case type | Archival policy |
| ServiceRequest (S prefix) | 1 year |
| Job (J prefix) | 6 months |
| TASKS (Task prefix) | 3 months |
In the following examples, all cases are archived if they meet the specified conditions:
Case hierarchy with sub-level parent and child cases
Case hierarchy with sub-level child cases
Stand-alone case
Artifacts that are archived during an archival process
The process archives certain artifacts within a case. The following table shows the artifacts that Pega Platform can archive:
Artifacts that are archived in Pega Platform
| Archived artifacts | Non-archived artifacts |
|
|
Case archiving process
To archive cases, Pega Platform uses different jobs that you set up through Job Schedulers to copy, index, and purge specific artifacts in stand-alone cases and case hierarchies.
Archive and purge jobs and processes
| Job Scheduler | Implementation and description |
| pyPegaArchiver | The pyPegaArchiver Job Scheduler (default short description: Archival_Copier) copies files to Pega Cloud File Storage through the following steps
|
| pyPegaIndexer | The pyPegaIndexer Job Scheduler (default short description: Archival_Indexer) indexes the copied files into Elasticsearch. The index keeps the association between an archived case and its archived file in Pega Cloud File Storage. |
| pyPegaPurger | The pyPegaPurger Job Scheduler (default short description: Archival_Purger) deletes cases and their associated data from the primary database. The job also integrates a SQL VACUUM command to process deleted space and reclaim the irrelevant empty database tables. |
| Optional: pyArchival_ReIndexer | The Archival_ReIndexer (default short description: Archival_ReIndexer) Job Scheduler fixes corrupted Elasticsearch indexes. This job follows a case archival and purge job when trying to fix case archives. |
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