Archive Types
Overview
While a super strength of OdataLink is the ability to pull live data, it can come with a performance cost. To mitigate that, OdataLink can archive data in our servers which returns data faster than from the live source. OdataLink has different options for caching depending on your situation. You can control how the archive works by changing the Archive Type option.
The possible values are:
- Live (with Archive)
- Live (no archive)
- Developer
- Static
Live (with Archive)
When the Archive Type is set to Live (with Archive), OdataLink will serve data directly from your data file.
This is the preferred option once you have finished building your reports and development is complete.
Some endpoints which cannot be edited, such as JournalsAccrual and JournalsCash will get cached in an encrypted archive to speed up refreshes. This only applies to endpoints whose data never changes.
It is also possible to configure a Cut Off Date which will instruct OdataLink to archive all data prior to this date. This increases the performance when pulling large amounts of historical data. The Cut Off Date can either be entered directly, or calculated from number of months or days prior to today.
The following options are available to configure the Cut Off Date for Archiving:
- Do not archive data by date
- Disables the archiving mechanism except for specific endpoints.
- Archive data prior to cut off date
- Archives any data created prior to the cut off date entered.
- Archive data prior X months
- Archives any data created prior to the cut off date calculated from the number of months entered.
- Archive data prior X days
- Archives any data created prior to the cut off date calculated from the number of days entered.
It may also be important to configure the Archive Paging option, which can force paging by month or year.
Live (no archive)
When the Archive Type is set to Live (no archive), OdataLink will serve data directly from your data file.
This is option is only recommended for those that need maximum security. It does come at the cost that some endpoints will be particularly slow.
Developer
When the Archive Type is set to Developer, OdataLink will be optimised for developing reports. In this mode, Live data will only be served once every 8 hours. If a refresh takes place within 8 hours of the last refresh, it will instead served cached data stored in an encrypted archive.
The benefit is that it makes refreshes faster but at the cost of not always retrieving the latest data.
This is the default when creating a model.
This is the preferred option when building reports. It should be changed to Live or Live (no archive) once development is complete.
Static
When the Archive Type is set to Static, OdataLink will only query data from your data file once.
This option is mostly used for data that never changes such as historical data.