3.3

4 Database Management
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2. Back up old material to tape and remove it from the database.
3. Check and reset purge intervals of Wires directories and queues.
To view purge intervals at the console, type:
list d wires
Information similar to the following appears:
SRPlo-LIsUG-QSXWFiT sortfield purge dis mbox directory
D-R-----I----Q-XW--- TITLE P4.0 D1 - WIRES
D-R-----I----Q-XW--- TITLE P4.0 D1 - WIRES.ALL
D-R-----I----Q-XW--- TITLE P4.0 D1 - WIRES.AP
...
One of the biggest consumers of database space in a newsroom is the Wires directory.
Because wire stories lose much of their value after a few days, most newsrooms set a
purge interval of 2 or 3 days. In this example, all Wires directories and queues have a
purge interval of four days. The purge interval is a database trait you can customize for
each database directory or queue. For more information on modifying database traits,
including purge intervals, see the Avid iNEWS Newsroom Computer System Setup and
Configuration Guide.
Maintaining the Database
The following sections describe the two most important maintenance procedures you should
perform regularly on your database:
• Check the database for errors
• Clean up the database on a monthly basis
Checking the Database for Errors
In the large databases typically maintained by newsrooms, minor errors can develop in some
stories as a result of vast amounts of information the system processes every day. These
errors can grow and eventually begin to damage the database if they are not removed.
To check stories in your database for errors, use the dblines console command, which
examines every story in the database. You can run dblines on any server while the system is
online. It can point out problems or errors in the structure of the database, find queue
corruption that must be fixed before a dbvisit is run, and make some repairs. It cannot
reclaim unreferenced blocks, adjust link counts, or rebuild the free list; dbvisit is required for
that.