Products
Webtrends Analytics 8.x
Webtrends Analytics 9.x
Cause
Report Retention is a feature giving users the ability to control the duration by which reports are retained by the application. This global duration is specified in the Webtrends user interface under “Administration > Application Settings > System Management > Retention > Report”, where each of the report periods display with the following default values:
Weekly Reports – 56
Monthly Reports – 24
Quarterly Reports – 8
Yearly Reports – 2
Based on the values above, when enabled, each profile will retain daily report data up to 120 days, weekly report data up to 56 weeks, monthly report data up to 24 months, quarterly report data up to eight quarters, and yearly report data up to two years. Viewing one of these report periods and attempting to select a date in the past beyond the retention date will display a message stating that there is no available data.
The option to limit the retention of report data for these report periods is disabled by default, making all report data for applicable periods available indefinitely. The drawback to all report data being available without restriction is that the volume of drive space used to store the report data will grow without restriction as well. On high volume systems with many profiles, this may consume considerable drive space over time. Furthermore, there is a trade-off between keeping large amounts of data and maintaining a robust database that generates reports efficiently. The decision to use this feature will depend on the availability of resources, the volume of data processed, and the degree to which retention of reports is relevant.
Resolution
The values by which report data is retained can be designated globally or on a per-profile basis.
To modify retention values for all profiles, navigate to “Administration > Application Settings > System Management > Retention > Report”, make changes as needed, then save.
To modify retention values on a per-profile basis (overriding the global setting), edit the profile and under “Reports > Report Periods”, select the report periods for which retention will be limited. When a report period is selected it will inherit the global retention duration by default. To specify a custom duration, check the box preceding the line beginning with “Override the Global Retention of” for the relevant report period, then add a custom value to the text box to the right. Click “Save” to save the change(s).
After the desired retention values are in place, navigate to Job Scheduler > Scheduled Jobs. Edit the job entitled “Report Data Retention” and uncheck the box for “Disable this job”, then save the change.
Once this change is made the “Report Data Retention” job will run once daily (by default) and purge the report database of all entries that exceed the duration specified.