Compressing the database

Compress the Oracle database to reduce the amount of disk space that the database uses.

Schedule the compression for once a year, considering the following factors:

• You must stop the Prinergy system to compress the database.
• If the database is very large (for instance, if the customer does not destroy jobs regularly), compression can take several hours. The time it will take depends on the size of the database and the speed of the Prinergy primary server.

Note: The guideline for free space required to compress the database is one and a half times (1.5x) the size of the database on both the C: and J: drives. Starting a compression will indicate whether you have sufficient space available for it to complete.

1. Quit the Prinergy Workshop client software on all client computers.
2. Stop Prinergy on all servers.
3. Shut down and restart the Prinergy primary server to ensure that the database is not in the process of being backed up.
   After the system has restarted, wait for the following Oracle services status to change to Running: 
   • OracleARAXI_12TNSListener
   • OracleServicearaxi

   This may take a couple of minutes. You can check the status of the services in the Services list: Run > Services.msc.

4. Start Prinergy Administrator.
5. In Prinergy Administrator, from the Tools menu, select Compress Database.
   The Compress Database menu item is available only on the Prinergy primary server, and only when Prinergy is not running.

6. In the Compress Database dialog box, click Compress.
   Database compression starts. The following table describes the information that appears as compression proceeds.

   Item	Description
   To be compressed	The size of all the database tables and indexes that will be compressed, in GB
   Name	The name of the internal database object that is currently being compressed
   Size	The size of the internal database object currently being compressed. Compression starts at the largest database object and proceeds to the smallest database object.
   Elapsed time	The amount of time it has taken so far to compress the database object identified in Name
   Status	The task currently underway—for example, "Compressing x of y", where x is the database object being compressed and y is the total number of database objects
   Total compression time	The total amount of time since Compress was pressed

7. When the "Database compression completed" message appears, close the Compression dialog box.
   Note: If you cancel the compression process before it is complete, Prinergy will take longer to start up because the database index must be rebuilt.

   Note: If the compression software terminates abnormally, restart your system, and then restart the compression. The compression process will resume where it left off.

8. Start Prinergy.
9. Start the Prinergy Workshop client software.

The amount of space that is freed by compressing the database depends on the:

• • Size of the database
  • Length of time since the last compression
  • Number of history entries that have been deleted. You control how frequently history entries are deleted.

Note: The first time that you back up the database after compressing it, the backup might be slightly slower than usual.