zTPFDF should provide an "aging" report similar to VERIFY chain counts, to show the time interval since the prime was last updated.

As a database administrator, I want to know how long it has been since a given sub-file was last updated so that stale, obsolete and no longer needed data can be more easily identified.

The idea is to Enhance CRUISE to provide “Aging” statistics in addition to the existing “chaining” statistics. The process would work exactly as the chain count process, except it would look at the block trailer and count the no. of days since the last update to that sub-file. So, the data in the 1, 2, 3, 4 … 8, 9 and M buckets could represent days, weeks or months based on what the user inputs. The “Age” display would mirror the ZFCRU Display-Statistics functional entry but would show the AGE and identify whether the intervals are in days, weeks, or months.

The process would use the existing buckets, except coding would calculate the difference between current date and the time stamp in the block trailer. This time stamp is already being maintained by TPFDF in the trailer every time a prime block is updated and filed. This would give us the time interval since the last time the record was updated. Most of the process would work similarly to the “chain count” process, except only the prime blocks would need to be retrieved. This will mean the process will run much faster than a standard verify.

Most systems have data that is old and outdated and well past its useful life. It just stays there taking up space and elongating runtimes for utilities and can impact application performance as well. It would be extremely helpful to identify where this data exists and how old that data is.