Cleaning large query volumes

Question

We are currently trying to get rid of a large amount of unused BW queries in our system. A department wishes to put a range of queries into quarenteen to see the impact on the business.
Is it possiple to move access to a selection of queries without actually deleting them?

Answer 1

Do you have BW Statistics installed and switched on?
This is the easiest way to determine the actual use of queries, but beware: some reports are designed perhaps to be run once per year, and so you need to have a good publicity in your organisation to avoid repercussions.
What should have happened what that your system's architect should have created naming conventions supported by authorizations. In that way you would have no difficulty identifying reports that were "test" reports not executed in the last 6-12 months. That's what I always set up.
In any case, the way to proceed would be to identify reports by the last execution date.
Once you have a subset of all queries identify the person who created them (or in the case where your business doesn't create them) identify who uses them, and email them the list.
Ask them to confirm which ones they use with a deadline to reply.
Follow it up if you don't get a response using polite emails "Four weeks until these queries get get removed - please confirm which ones to keep" Two weeks... One Week... 3days... 2 days..1day...
Then delete them. They might complain but they were given fair warning, and as long as your management stand by this process it's very hard to argue that they weren't informed.
I worked for a very large international organisation, we had to rebuild maybe three of the 2000 odd queries that were deleted, because the user did not react to emails. No big deal in the end and we got a nice clean system.
Edited by: Christopher DCosta on Mar 24, 2011 4:53 PM