How big is your Markit EDM database? If your installation was completed more than a few months ago, there’s a good chance it’s enormous. Often, Markit EDM is implemented at a financial services firm without putting policies in place for database size and maintenance. In many cases, databases approach hundreds of gigabytes of data in less than two years. This impacts the functionality of Markit, makes it difficult to refresh development environments, and costs your firm more for unneeded disc storage.
If you’re in this situation, it’s time to prune some data. While there are programs that can automate this process, it’s critical to remember that implementing an automated process on an extremely large database can yield unexpected (and unfortunate) results. A customized approach is much faster and will ensure that the right data is eliminated, archived, or selected to remain in the database.
Recently, we worked on a project for a financial services firm whose database had grown over several hundred Gigabytes of data. We began by meeting with the various business users to understand which tables contained large amounts of information that was not needed, which tables were duplicate information, and which tables needed to be archived for compliance or analysis purposes. We then built a custom process that removed over 200 GB of data, reallocated the newly available space, and re-indexed all the indexes that were affected – all in a single weekend. Once the database was cleaned up, we implemented an ongoing process that will keep the database a manageable size. This custom process is much simpler to implement and maintain than some other programmatic options the firm could have considered.
Of course, the best solution to database cleanup is to consider a data management policy during your Markit EDM installation. However, that doesn’t always happen. We understand. If you’re in a situation where the size of your database is impacting your firm’s performance, give us a call. We can help you improve your Markit EDM system’s performance, your ability to refresh your development environment, and achieve cost savings.
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