How to use the Command Line Interface (CLI) parameters of the Delete-Library-Versions command: --user and --search-query

 properly when searching.

Keywords:

Details:

Spotfire 12 and higher includes an ability to delete non-current (old) versions of objects that are saved in the Spotfire Library. You can delete bulk amounts of such data via the delete-library-versions command, as described by this article:

https://docs.tibco.com/pub/spotfire_server/12.0.0/doc/html/TIB_sfire_server_tsas_admin_help/server/topics/delete-library-versions.html#GUID-B4820538-E8B4-4F98-9D9D-D0E33151A430

Note that this command will not delete the actual library items, only previous versions of DXP files that match the search criteria that you specify via the -u parameter. Specifying "*" as the value will act on all DXP files in your library.

Also, as long as you do not include the  -f/--force parameter then at the command prompt you will get to see the versions to be deleted and the object to which they belong, before any deletion occurs.  If you do not respond to the Y/N prompt with y or Y then this command will be aborted.

The above article describes each of this command's parameters. Listed below are some embellishments:

1.

-q value
--search-query=value

For a -q parameter value if you specify -q "boston data" then the inline response of the command line will be a list of all Documents in my library containing more than one version, where the document name contains the words "boston data".  All version records' metadata will display, grouped by the document to which they belong. Version metadata will be guid value, then size value, and then finally last-modified date-time. Document metadata will be Title followed by guid values. The check is not case sensitive and leading blank characters are stripped from your criteria.

2. 

-u value
--user=value

The value you specify for this parameter must be an exact match to the username value of a Spotfire user account, and sometimes must include the domain value as well, in the form 'DOMAIN\user'.

You can specify this value within double quotes, or not. The value is not case sensitive. If your username is spfadmin then include this in the command line: -u spfadmin. 

If no documents are found with more than a single version then the command reports "No library item version selected to delete."

Note that these deletes are not reversible; after the commands succeeds then these older version records are not recoverable. You may want to archive a back up copy of your Spotfire database before proceeding.