Three Secrets to a Worry Free Gentran Server For Windows.

How can I keep my Gentran Server running smoothly? I’m not sure what it is, but I have been getting this question a lot recently and I can only speculate that it has something to do with aging Gentran Servers and the high turnover of employees do to the economy. What ever the reason behind the surge in maintenance related questions, I figure it’s about time I blogged about what 15 years of Sterling Commerce Gentran Server for Windows projects have taught me about the product. So enjoy and please feel free to leave questions, comments and requests for future subjects.

1) Keep process data clean – Process data are the active logs and data files currently in Gentran. Questions regarding process data are by far the number one question I get; like: Our system keeps running out of space? It takes so long to find anything? Why is Gentran so slow? All these questions generally stem from a misguided belief that every transaction ever processed or something close to it has to be kept in active history all the time. This simply is not true, even the IRS only requires 7 years and backups and archives of those transactions are perfectly legitimate. I generally recommend that a company only keep between 30 to 90 days max in there active process data. There are three key aspects to keeping process data clean and getting at the history when it’s needed.

• Archives – (weekly) Run the Archive utility from the process controller on a regular schedule and keep track of the archive names and the date period of the data contained within each archive. This way you can quickly retrieve transactions as needed utilizing the archive viewer. Transactions can also be moved back to the active process data if needed. By doing this you free up the number of transactions Gentran has to keep track of and quite possibly your biggest gain in performance.
• Database Maintenance – (Monthly) After Gentran has finished archiving especially if it was a large archive; find a time when you can shut down the Gentran services and ask your DBA to go ahead and compact the database.
• Data Store Maintenance – (Monthly) One word “GICheck”. GICheck is a utility that comes with Gentran that verifies the integrity of the Data Store against the records contained in the database. This utility basically looks for and removes any orphaned files and database records. Note: if you’re getting file system related errors occasionally while trying to view transactions, GICheck will be your best friend.

2) Separation – Ok I can go on forever on this subject as I’ve seen thousands of installations and it’s always the same: We open up the directory Gentran was installed to and there is like literally hundreds of sub-directories right off the root and about half of them are no longer being used or even worse, users are actively doing their daily processing right out the bin directory. Here is what I recommend:

• Create two directories “Not inside the Gentran application directory”, The first directory will be for the Gentran data store. The second directory will be for any user access data and utilities (example: scripts and the directories needed to support then, also any import and export directories).
• Follow the instructions contained in Gentran’s documentation, share the new data store directory and move your existing data store to the new data store directory.
• Make the necessary changes needed to move the any user access data and utilities to their new home.

3) Stay Organized – Simply put, keep it clean and organized. Things like naming conventions for scripts, maps and mailboxes along with approaching everything with a reusable object objective, can go a long way towards helping to keep your sanity.