Duffbert's Random Musings

Document Number:  1095683

Problem
A customer would like to purge all of the document deletion stubs on the server database now, instead of waiting for the set purge interval.  How can this be done?

Content
There are two options.

Option #1:

All document deletion stubs in a database can be purged by selecting File, Replication, Settings and setting the "Remove Documents Not Modified in the Last" setting to 0 days.  Once this is done, click OK and close the database.  Open the database again to purge the deletion stubs immediately.  Next, change back the "Remove Documents Not Modified..." setting to 90 days.

IMPORTANT:  If you place a checkmark next to "Remove Documents Not Modified in the Last" setting, and place a "0" in the Days field, all of the documents will be deleted from the database.  Do not place a checkmark in that box; only change the number of days setting to "0" (see Figure 1 in the Supporting Information section below for an example of this).

Once this is done, you can return this setting back to the original number.


Option #2:

All document deletion stubs in a database can be purged by setting the cutoff date ahead two days from the current date.  Once this is done, the deletion stubs are purged immediately.  To do this, select File, Replication, Settings, Other, and set "Only replicate incoming documents saved or modified after."

Be sure to replace the 2 days ahead date immediately once the deletion stubs have been purged.

WARNING:  If the "Remove Documents Saved More Than XX Days Ago" option is enabled in a database's replication settings when the cutoff date is set ahead, all documents saved before the cutoff date will be removed from the database.  Notes behaves this way because both the cutoff date and "Remove Documents..." feature are designed to save space in local replicas.  The cutoff date sets the maximum age for documents to be received by the local replica.  When the "Remove Documents..." option is enabled, Notes automatically removes (leaving no deletion stub) any document saved before the cutoff date, ignoring any interval specified in the "Remove Documents..." option.

Depending upon the Notes platform, it may also be necessary to set the purge interval to one day as well as setting the cutoff date ahead.  This is not required for all Notes platforms.  On early 3.x versions of Notes for UNIX platforms, the Cutoff Date option is not available, and the purge interval cannot be used to purge deletion stubs immediately.

You can see the approximate number of document deletion stubs in a database by adding up all of the shared fields and all of the documents, and then subtracting this number from the total number of documents shown, when a new replica of the database is created.

To view deletion stubs, Notespeek can be used.  Notespeek is available on the Lotus Developer Domain website (in the Sandbox).

Supporting Information:

This information does not apply to deletion stubs for design elements (eg. forms, view or macros).  Refer to the document titled "Removing Design Element Deletion Stubs From a Database" (#132699 ) for additional information.

Figure 1:
Example of Replication Settings