I was asked the other day, what is the difference between the Delete option and the Purge option in Deltek Cobra. The answer is quite simple and you may find one far more preferable over another depending on what you want to do.
First, this option pertains only to the act of deleting projects: not anything else. And the simple answer is that clicking Delete will delete just the selected project and possibly its calendar, while Purge will remove not only the project, but its calendar and all other related ancillary files to boot.
So check it out – here’s a demo of the two options.
We select the Titan II Orbiter project and first, let’s see what happens when we simply delete the project.
We are offered a dialog asking if we want to delete the project with options. Yes, meaning just the project, Yes to All meaning go whack the Calendar too, but leave all the Codes, Rates and Resources files alone. No and No to All simply abandons the process and nothing is deleted whichever one you pick.
We clicked ‘Yes to All’ and no surprise, it whacked the Project and its Calendar, but left all the Code, Rate and Resources files in the database.
Now let’s do the same, only this time we will choose the Purge option. In the ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you’ dialog, we see a list of that which is about to be permanently whacked. In short any file that is associated with the project is scheduled for removal.
We click on the Purge button and after a few moments of screen jiggling, the project and all its data are a distant memory.
Warning
If you have projects that are sharing ancillary files in the system, you probably DON’T want to use the Purge feature. Purge bypasses the usual safety checks for deleting ancillary files that are in use by other copies of the project. I don’t have to point out how potentially ‘not good’ that is.
Doing this will break existing projects and you will see the following types of message when you next attempt to work in the damaged projects:
This is Cobra’s way of telling you that there are orphaned records in the Cobra database for this project and that you will need to restore the lost ancillary files from a backup.
Also note that you cannot Purge a project that is currently open in Cobra.
When to Purge
Personally speaking, I would only use purge when I am looking to completely remove a completed and no longer active project. It is a quick and easy way to clear a lot of unneeded data from your Deltek Cobra database, keeping this leaner and meaner for other projects that are coming on line.