I'm with a Client that has half of their OpenEdge database filled with unwanted audit records (user built auditing; not OE auditing). The database is around 200GB and 97GB are these audit records. The user built auditing process is now disabled and not used and they simply want rid of the data.
We can't delete the data programmatically because we have no dev tools here. I know the data is safe to delete without causing orphans or referential integrity issues elsewhere in the db.
The audit tables are in their own area as defined in the st file.
They've tested dumping and loading (minus the audit data) but they stopped the load after 4 days because they deemed it too long to be without their primary business database. So this is untenable in a production environment.
They've tried simply removing the data files and editing the st file but they then had problems with backup/restore - probably due to the mismatch on the st file (I wasn't around then to see the problems first hand).
What is the fastest, easiest way to get rid of this data please?
Proutil "truncate area" should do what you describe.
Once the data is removed via the truncate area then drop the tables & indexes and prostrct remove the offending extents.
(Without dev tools you may have to create a stub storage area and "table move" the EMPTY tables and indexes rather than dropping them.)