What is the 'Agedatabase - Stale Object Purge' entry in the Incident Audit Log?

Environment

Incident Audit Log, Agedatabase

Resolution

An entry in the Incident Audit log showing 'Agedatabase - Stale Object Purge' is expected when a change is made to a table that is related to incidents. For example, if a category was deleted, the orphaned data related to that category must also be cleaned up for any incident using that category. When the orphaned category is cleaned up by Agedatabase, the category field on the incident is set to the next category level above the deleted category. If there was no sibling category, than 'no value' would be set for the field.

The categories table is just one example where orphaned data may need cleaned up by Agedatabase. If deletions are made to contacts, products, dispositions, organizations, etc. the entry may be seen in the Incident Audit Log if that table had a relationship to incidents. Additionally, since the cleanup of orphaned data happens on all incidents where the relationship exists, this means the process can often include incidents that have been closed for several years but have not yet been archived. 

The process of cleaning up the orphaned data also may take several days to complete. This can be due to how large the incidents table is, or even the table that had data removed from it. This means that the deletion from a table related to incidents may not be the same date that the 'Agedatabase - Stale Object Purge' entry is shown in the Incident Audit Log. For this reason, if this entry is found in the audit log, it is important to analyze what may have changed within the past couple weeks on the site. If there was any deletion of data, consider if that data is related to incidents. 

Oracle B2C Service Technical Support typically does not investigate what actions led to these entries. This is because this Agedatabase process is working as intended to safely clean up any data left behind as a result of changes made to the site.