Where to start? A Spring Clean

[digitaljunkie]

Our Database is huge imo, like 900 odd scripts, 300 or so relationships, 250 odd layouts.

Don't get me wrong a lot of it is used but then a lot I guess isn't.

Over the years as things have developed and/or been tested and duplicates made etc etc this monster has grown a few (lol) unwanted weeds.

How to degunk such a monster?

I want to organize the unorganied scripts, being ruthless and deleting all unused scripts.

Selete all unused layouts, old, and the infamous backup ones that don't get deleted when the current one works etc etc.

Where to start is my question.

I looked at a DDR which it gets all of the way to the end (blue progress bar) and hangs.

Anyone know of a good plugin or utility for database reporting?

Or is it a real lets get all the bods in one room and clean house job?

Any/all input is appreciated cheers.

Edited June 26, 2006 by Guest

[Genx]

It can be dangerous deleting scripts or TO's, you could do one of two things:

A) Start from scratch and rebuild an efficient solution. Especially if you know what your doing, you can slipstream the development knowing exactly what you need.

Organise those things you know the purpose for and move off to the side somewhere those things you don't know the purpose for.. Under no circumstance should you delete layouts or TO's or tables or fields, especially if you don't know what's in half your scripts - If you do delete something you won't notice it until it starts causing problems, and you never know what really realies on what when your database is a partial mess.

Hope this all helped.

[Genx]

BTW, let the DDR process for a while --> it's taken up to 10 minutes for me.

[IdealData]

Have you looked at The Analyzer from Waves In Motion?

I have a much larger problem than yours (60 dbs, 10,000+ scripts, 3,000+ layouts) and once tried the analysis. I once managed a complete analysis when it ran for a whole weekend!

I'm still using FM6, but the later versions are supposed to be much quicker.

[Ocean West]

You may also look at the Inspector from FM Nexus/Beeswax. (it's the predicessor to Analyzer.)

http://fmnexus.com/

[SteveB]

Its the successor to Analyzer, and is supposed to be almost 4 times as fast. I don't believe Analyzer will run on v7-8 files.

Steve

[IdealData]

Interesting comment Steve - I presume you don't use it either?

Edited June 26, 2006 by Guest

[SteveB]

I did use Analyzer, and it did find problems that I didn't know about. I also used Brushfire, which was very fast (written in C++), but it was an early version that had problems. FWIW, the developer of Analyzer, Vince Mennino, is the developer of FM Inspector. I think its kind of expensive at $399 per copy, and at one time, he was offering an upgrade if you owned either product.

Steve