Maintenance in Dynamics 6

[NickIstre]

Hi all, I got a question for you experts out there.

My company is running Dynamics 6 using the Pervasive.SQL 2000i SP4 database. We enter and post around 1200 to 1300 orders a week in SOP.

My question is how often should we perform maintenance on our data (Such as Shrink, Rebuild, Check Links, and Reconcile)? I've read at one point that we need to Shrink and Rebuild once a week somewhere in the Dynamics documentation, and possibly everyday if we do a large number of transactions.

As of now, we don't have a regular maintenance plan for our dynamics data other than run them when we have problems with the data (Which, in Dynamics, seem to be pretty often for a "client/server" system).

Thanks for any help,
Nicholas Istre

 

[hooggie]

How often is subject to what so many things.

It would be better to explain what they do so that you can choose how often to run them for yourself.

Shrink: When you great plains increases the size of a file or database table to allow for transactions it will never decrease the size of the file when it is no longer needed. Shrink will do this freeing up unused disk space. This does not apply MS SQL server, I am not sure if this has any impact on Pervasive SQL.

Rebuild: This option rebuilds the table indexes making searches faster. This option does not apply to MS SQL Server I am not sure if this applies to Pervasive SQL.

Checklinks: This is a database consistency check. The general fix up tool. If something goes wrong 90% of the time this self fixeing tool will be able to look at the data records and fix the data that has gone wrong or at least tell you what is wrong.

If the system is going wrong then I would suggest that maybe you should not be running so many transactions of Pervasive and instead should be on SQL server.

 

[phark]

We were using Pervasive up until a year ago, but finally made the switch to MS SQL. We generate about 2,500 invoices a week and the Pervasive was so slow posting and was constantly crashing during posting. A typical batch with say, 50 invoices in it would take 15 to post with Pervasive. In MS-SQL, that same batch takes under a minute! We also never crash anymore.

When we ran Pervasive, it seemed whenever we ran the "suggested" maintenance cycles, it would do more harm than good. Its hard to say with Pervasive... sometimes, if its not broke, don't fix it.

I would start pushing for an upgrade in your budget.

 

[lmwills]

We run check links once a week - we too enter about 2000 orders a week - I think it keeps us in tip top shape. I reindex the sql server once a week as well.