TRANSFER Programming Manual

Item Retention Times
TRANSFER Services
5–4 40970 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Item Retention Times Individual correspondents and system administrators can manage the length of time
items are stored by specifying either an automatic unsave time for an individual item
or an item retention time for a folder or depot.
You can specify an unsave time when you save an item with the SAVE-ITEM-B00 and
SAVE-ITEM-BY-KEY UOWs. You can also use the CREATE-FOLDER-B10
and ALTER-FOLDER-DESCR UOWs to specify a default item retention time.
You use the default item retention time when you save an item with the SAVE-ITEM
UOW, which does not allow you to specify an unsave time. A system administrator
can set a maximum for any item retention time specified within the depot with the
ALTER-PROFILE-ELEM UOW or with the ADMIN application.
Unsave times for individual items can specify a time and date (absolute time) or a time
relative to when the item was stored (relative time). Item-retention times for a folder
or depot are always relative.
You can retrieve information about unsave times for individual items with the SCAN-
FOLDER-B00, SCAN-FOLDER-BY-KEY, SCAN-BY-ITEM-NAME, and GET-ITEM-
NAME UOWs. You can retrieve the item retention time for a folder with the GET-
FOLDER-DESCR UOW and for a depot with the GET-PROFILE-ELEM UOW.
You can alter item retention times at the folder level with the ALTER-FOLDER-DESCR
UOW. System administrators can alter item retention times at the depot level with the
ALTER-PROFILE-ELEM UOW. You cannot alter unsave times for individual items.
The profile-level item retention time in effect at the beginning of a session is stored for
the duration of the session. If a system administrator uses ALTER-PROFILE-ELEM to
change the item retention time, the old value is still used for item retention until the
end of the session. The GET-PROFILE-ELEM UOW, however, retrieves a new item
retention time value as soon as it is changed.
Unsave times and item retention times at the folder and depot level interact as follows.
Default Values
The TRANSFER delivery system maintains the folder-level default item retention time
and depot-level item retention times as separate fields in the depot profile, so that you
can have a folder-level default retention time that is different from the depot-level
maximum retention time.
When a depot is created, it is given the folder-level default item retention time and
depot-level maximum retention time constraints of the depot that was used as a
model. The model depot supplied by Tandem has these values set to infinity, which
means that items are saved forever. These two retention time values can be changed
both by the depot owner and by system administrators with write privilege. The value
specified at the folder level, however, cannot exceed that specified at the depot level.
Thus, if you change the depot-level field to a value less than that of the folder-level
field, the TRANSFER delivery system immediately reduces the folder-level field to the
value of the depot-level field.