Regular readers here know that I've been blogging about database archiving for the past couple of months. And you'll also know that the primary driving factor influencing the need to archive is compliance with the long and growing list of governmental regulations. But, some people say, show me exactly where in those regulations it says I have to archive my data!
Well, the truth of the matter is that no regulation will explicitly dictate archiving as a requirement. Instead, the regulations will talk about data retention or document retention. And once you do enough research into the problems, retention equates to archiving. This is especially so for long-term data retention. Oh, we can easily manage short term data retention (a few years or so) for most forms of corporate data right within the operational database. Not always, but usually. If there are strict requirements on the authenticity of the data then there are valid reasons for archiving data with short-term retention needs.
When long-term data retention is imposed on your data -- anything more than a couple of years -- then archiving becomes the only valid solution to being in compliance with such regulations. This is so because without a database archiving solution, such requirements will impose hardships on operational performance, can exceed the ability of existing DBMS technology to store such large volumes of data, and lack the ability to maintain authenticity over changing database schemas.
So when you are looking for which regulations impose the need to archive data from your databases, the key is to locate the section of the regulation that talks about retention of documents. For legal purposes, a document is any type of data - not just a printed document. And, as we've discussed here previously, the predominant form of documents (evidence, that is) is computerized data.