Deleting Really Old Customers, Orders, etc

[Doodlebuckets]

Is there a way to delete old info that is just clogging up the database and bogging things down? Like deleting customers, orders, banner history, etc to a certain date so that really old stuff can be gone? I have had my store for 5 or so years now and some things that are useless are just sitting there. Any tool for clearing out dross? Something that doesn't mess with products, categories, meta tags, etc. Thanks!

[DarthBender]

I asked a similar question with no response. Doesn't anyone have a solution to this?

[Doodlebuckets]

In my investigation of this with my host, they've told me the best thing to do is repair and analyze the database and then manually delete stuff. They feel it's just too dangerous to have an automated way to do it. I think it would be ok, as long as only certain tables were cleaned up. But, what do I know?

[apsona]

You could use Apsona ShopAdmin for this purpose. You can locate old customers or orders via its search feature (e.g., create a search term such as 'created date older than Jan 1, 2006') and then click Tools - delete all.

Hope this helps.

Apsona
http://apsona.com

[RodG]

Is there a way to delete old info that is just clogging up the database and bogging things down? Like deleting customers, orders, banner history, etc to a certain date so that really old stuff can be gone?

Not that I'm aware off. Besides, what makes you think that this information is affecting the performance of your store? Unless there is something amiss with the database itself it wouldn't matter how much 'old stuff' you delete it won't make any noticeable difference to the performance of the site. Database queries are lightning fast compared to the time it takes to render (display) a page.

Also, it is bad practice to delete old records from a database. It is better/safer to mark them 'inactive' (where the need and possibility exists).

Anyway, if I knew of a reliable way of doing this I'd certainly be telling you about it, but if such code or module doesn't exist at least you'll have an idea why (not a high demand for it).

Cheers
Rod

[Doodlebuckets]

Not that I'm aware off. Besides, what makes you think that this information is affecting the performance of your store? Unless there is something amiss with the database itself it wouldn't matter how much 'old stuff' you delete it won't make any noticeable difference to the performance of the site. Database queries are lightning fast compared to the time it takes to render (display) a page.

Also, it is bad practice to delete old records from a database. It is better/safer to mark them 'inactive' (where the need and possibility exists).

Anyway, if I knew of a reliable way of doing this I'd certainly be telling you about it, but if such code or module doesn't exist at least you'll have an idea why (not a high demand for it).

Cheers
Rod

My host tells me so. I have had my store for 5yrs or so and my admin activity table and others were massive and were bogging down my store. I had not realized that I needed to sort of "defrag" my tables periodically by doing the repair and analyze functions. I had a lot of "Overhead" in my tables too, which I didn't know was a problem. Emptying my admin activity and banner history helped a lot.

[DarthBender]

My client needs the customers and order removed because we are moving the store and only need products. How can we make this happen?

[RodG]

My host tells me so.

Unless your host 'snoops' on your site/database they wouldn't have a clue how many 'old' customer records you have.

I have had my store for 5yrs or so

Databases don't get sluggish due to age.

and my admin activity table and others were massive and were bogging down my store.

They may be massive, but you are still making an assumption about it being the cause of 'bogging down the store'.

I had not realized that I needed to sort of "defrag" my tables periodically

Database tables don't need a 'defrag'. Admittedly there is an option to 'optimize' a database (which basically clears out any 'spaces' caused by record deletions) but this should only be used on tables that regularly have records deleted (such as log files). Other records (such as customer sales data, etc) really should never be deleted from a database (as previously mentioned), so performing an 'optimize' on these tables is effectively a waste of time.

by doing the repair and analyze functions. I had a lot of "Overhead" in my tables too, which I didn't know was a problem..

Repair and analyze will make good most errors and problems caused by a server falure or similar... over 5 years there have probably been lots of these (although MySQL does attempt an auto-repair if it detects a problem when it restarts). It pays to keep an eye on this, but generally it takes care of itself.

Emptying my admin activity and banner history helped a lot.

I'm happy that you believe this to be true, but neither of these will have any affect whatsoever on the performance of your store.

I suspect that what would have made a difference would have been the repair on the tables, as a corrupt table can really slow things down.

Please understand that I'm not giving you all these details to show how smart I am or to criticize you in any way, I am merely trying to stress the fact that what you *think* is bogging things down probably isn't the case, and that you can get, and maintain peak performance just by running the repair/optimize tools without having to delete/purge 5 year old sales and customer data. This kind of data can be priceless and probably irreplaceable, it could be a shame to toss it away based on a misconception. (I actually have sales and repair data going back over 20years).

Having said that, it is YOUR store, and YOUR data... I am just expressing a concerned opinion.

Cheers
Rod