Data integrity refers to the accuracy, completeness and reliability of data stored within your Cradle database. Checking database integrity is important as it guarantees both the traceability and searchability of your data. It also increases the performance and stability of your data. Maintaining the integrity of your data is essential. As you collect more and more data within your Cradle project, it is a priority to maintain the integrity of this data, otherwise the data is worthless.
Error checking ensures that your Cradle data hasn’t been compromised, e.g. during upgrades/imports etc. We recommend that integrity checks are done on a regular basis.
In Cradle, there are a couple of ways to check the integrity of your database:
Item Integrity
The Item Integrity option allows you to perform integrity checks on your Cradle database. This option is available from the Project tab in WorkBench:
The Frame Version Checks detect missing versions of any frames or missing records in any version of any frame for the item type specified. Errors can be fixed using the Fix button.
There are many Item Checks which are explained here.
Many of these checks can be made subject to one of the following scopes:
- Superseded or retired – Selects items with a status of S (Superseded) or T (Retired)
- Latest baseline – Selects items with a status of B (Open Baseline)
- Deleted – Selects items with a status of D (Deleted)
- Current – All current items
If you want to produce a report of the item integrity check, ensure to select the Generate a report checkbox.
Cross Reference Integrity
The Cross Reference Integrity Check option checks the cross references in your Cradle database.
The current set of cross references is scanned to find any cross references that are invalid. Any cross reference is only counted once in these checks. So if a cross reference is dangling and also invalid, it will only appear once in the counts.
The Cross Reference Checks are explained here.
When the integrity check has been ran you have the following options:
- Fix – Fix the cross references
- Export – Export the group to a CSV file
- List – List the group individually
- Delete – Delete the cross references from the group
The Fix and Delete options for privileged users must only be run when there are no other active users in the database. If you are in any doubt, do NOT run these operations.
If you want to produce a report of the cross reference integrity check, ensure to select the Generate error report checkbox.