My Database is Almost at the 10GB Limit. What do I do?

ShipWorks is installed with Microsoft SQL Express which includes a 10 GB (gigabyte) database limit. In the vast majority of cases this is more than enough database space. However, if the amount of data reaches approximately 80% (8 GB) of the database limit you will be prompted with a warning in the ShipWorks software.

This article will guide you through steps that you can take to reduce the amount of data in your ShipWorks database by modifying the Delete Old Data action to delete Audit History older than 180 days.

ShipWorks keeps track of the changes to an order, which user made the changes and when the changes occurred. It also stores details about the changes. These audit records can be viewed in ShipWorks by right clicking on an order, selecting Edit and then Audit. A typical audit record is shown below.

1. This article assumes that you are on version 3.7 or greater of ShipWorks. You can check your ShipWorks version by clicking on Help > About ShipWorks.

2. You will need to ensure that the PC that houses the ShipWorks database is powered on overnight and that it is not hibernating or in sleep mode.

3. This article also assumes that you have the action 'Delete Old Data' in the ShipWorks Action Manager.

a. To check for the action go to Manage > Actions. Look for an action named Delete Old Data.

b. If you do not have this action, please please follow the steps in this article to create it, then return to the The Process section of this article.

Detailed steps found after the video.

 

1. Click on the Manage tab and then on the Actions button.

2. Select the Delete Old Data actions and click the Edit button.

3. We are going to modify a couple of the default settings so that more data is deleted from the database. Here's how:

3a. In the Data to Delete: section, check the box to the left of Audit History.

3b. In the Options section, change the value for Stop if deletion takes longer than ___ hours from 6 to 10 hours.

4. Click OK. Then, click Close.

What's Next?

Tonight at 11 pm the action will run and purge the data specified in the action properties. We recommend that tomorrow morning (or on the next business day) you check the database size to verify that the action freed up database space. Here's how:

1. In ShipWorks, click on Manage > Configuration.

2. Verify that the total database size is now under 8 GB.