POA Logging: Different Purge Events

  • 3724293
  • 10-Jan-2007
  • 26-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell GroupWise 6.5
Novell GroupWise 7.0
Novell GroupWise Post Office Agent (POA)

Situation

What do the different purge events in the POA logs correspond to?
Purge Item Record
Purge Message Record
Purge Execution Record

Resolution

Purge Execution Record:
An execution record is created for users that use Notify. Execution records are created every time the user needs to be notified of a new mail and it is these records that Notify consumes. Once the user has been notified or the parent item is deleted the execution record is effectively expired. These get purged during GWChecks or when the client, for example, empties trash.

The purging of Message Records and Item Records are related. To understand them you need to understand the Single Copy Message Store method that GroupWise uses. When a message is sent to a user, or multiple users on a Post Office, the message is stored in the message databases and a pointer placed in each recipient's user database. This reduces the size of the message store. When a user deletes a mail they are only deleting the pointer from their user database. Once all users in the post office have deleted the message then the record from the message database is also removed.
So, the POA log entries correspond to a user removing the item by either archiving it or emptying trash (Purge Item Record) or the POA cleaning up the message database record after all users have removed the item (Purge Message Record).