How do the purge settings in Oracle B2C Service affect our application? 

Environment:

Configuration, Analytics
Oracle B2C Service

Resolution:

Configuration settings within the Oracle B2C Service application allow you to configure how long certain types of records and data are retained in your database. Some features generate considerable data that is often useful for just a few months, such as certain statistics or search results.

Purging data typically results in better site performance with regard to searching and reports. However, configuring any of these settings to be a value other than 0 causes data to be permanently and irretrievably deleted from the database. Therefore, when evaluating the purge configuration settings, exercise caution. Carefully evaluate and consider how purging data and statistics will affect your site and reporting. The various purge settings in Oracle B2C Service allow you to customize how long some types of data are kept in your database.

Read the setting description carefully before modifying any of the purge settings. Each setting begins with a warning similar to:

*****WARNING WARNING WARNING *****
Configuring this setting to any number other than zero may cause data and reporting data to be irretrievably deleted from the database. Review the setting description and documentation carefully prior to setting the value. Verify that your organization will have no future need for the data or the need to report on the data exceeding the threshold.
*****WARNING WARNING WARNING *****

Some commonly used settings that allow you to purge data from your database are listed below. For each of the settings, before you modify the value, verify that your organization will not need the data for reporting for the date range extending beyond the number of days specified.

Path to setting(s): Select Configuration from the navigation area > Site Configuration > Configuration Settings > and search by Key.

	PURGE_DELETE_INC_PERFORMANCE: Defines the number of days after which incident performance statistics are removed from the database. Set this value to 0 to prevent statistics from being removed from the database. Default is 0.
	PURGE_DELETE_KEYWORD_SEARCHES:  Defines the number of days after which keyword search statistics are removed from the database. Set this value to 0 to prevent statistics from being removed from the database. Default is 120.
	PURGE_DELETE_QUEUE_STATS: Defines the number of days after which queue statistics are removed from the database. Set this value to 0 to prevent statistics from being removed from the database. Default is 120.
	PURGE_DELETE_SESSION_SUMMARY: Defines the number of days after which session summary statistics (session_summary) are removed from the database. Set this value to 0 to prevent statistics from being removed from the database. Default is 0.
	PURGE_CS_SESSION_SUMMARY: Specifies the number of days after which the clickstream session summary table (cs_session_summary) will be truncated. 0 means it will never be truncated. The minimum, non-zero value allowed is 8. Default is 60.
	PURGE_DELETE_USER_TRANS: Defines the number of days after which login/logout sessions are removed from the user_trans table (relative to the logout time). Set this value to 0 to prevent login/logout sessions from being removed from the database. Default is 0.
	PURGE_RULE_LOG_FREQ: Specifies the number of days after which Rule Log entries will be deleted. The maximum value for this setting is 180. Default is 30.
	PURGE_WIDX_LOG_FREQ: Specifies the number of days after which WWW Spidering Log entries will be deleted. The maximum value for this setting is 180. Default is 30.