How do you delete a Product or Library?

[gchampoux]

I'm starting to play with Windchill Intralink 9.1.
For testing, I created a library and product.
Now I want to delete them but do not see an option to do so anywhere.
I couldn't find anything in PTC's knowlegebase.

What am I missing?

Gerry Champoux
Williams International

[MikeLockwood]

This is one of the first tech support call I put in also - several years ago.

Not possible (ever, ever, ever, ever, ever).

Important to find all those things like that can never be backed out. Also important to do all this type of stuff on a test system, and only put into production what you really want to be in production forever.

[avillanueva]

Mike is right, best option is to rename them to something else, reuse
them when you need to create another Product or Library.

[gchampoux]

Thanks to all that replied.

I cannot understand why PTC does not allow deleting a product or library.
(I can imagine PTC's response: Why would you want to do that?)

Fortunately, renaming them is a viable option.

Gerry

[avillanueva]

Funny, that was the response I got when I called in once. Renaming
wasn't always possible.

[ptc-2878357]

Hi ,
Deleting of Product or Library completely from WIndchill system is not
allowed. You can delete it from UI only.But it will still be
present in the system.


On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Villanueva, Antonio <
-> wrote:

> Funny, that was the response I got when I called in once. Renaming
> wasn’t always possible.
>
>

[ocorten-2]

Gerry, I second that.

To me it's totally unintuitive that you can't delete something which you
can also create.
Renaming and reusing them is just a workaround to something so trivial
like deleting.

It might be helpfull if PTC explained *why* it is so difficult for them
to allow us to delete a product or library.
Just like they did with the apparently impossible to create Logout
button.


Olaf Corten
CAD/PLM Manager, Besi Competence Center - Other Business Applications
Fico BV, Ratio 6, 6921 RW Duiven, The Netherlands
Tel.: +31 26 3196215

[RussPratt]

I also am at a loss to understand why there is no mechanism to delete Product and Library contexts. However, you may delete them for all practical purposes by making them invisible to all users via a Deny ALL rule to the context. Be aware, that it is also possible to deny them to the System Admin user as well, and you may not want this, so work out the desired rules before implementing.

Russ

[ddemay]

Just to add my thought here. I agree why would you want to delete a product or library. You can delete a project, but these are more for prototype in some use cases whilst others don't view them that way. It is not impossible to delete them, code would just have to be written to check for instances in each applicable persistence object type for where the context object identifier is used and remove or alters these references. Something similar to the proper deletion of a user which might otherwise result in a disconnected principal. You'll have code in many places break due to disconnected contexts.

Having the ACL option or changing the soft type identifer of the product give you flexibilty to block out the product and related data without ever deleting it.

I guess all who have replied here have not given a good enough reason to have such a feature.

It would be nice if products had a state or phase like products to filter off of so you could not have deleted/canceled/completed/obsolent etc. Appear in your list of products to acess.

If it's a test product on a test server, does having delete help here somehow?

I seen many responses, but no real use case. Mainly nice to have?




Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

[gchampoux]

I would have hoped that the answer was obvious: Testing

I am currently testing Intralink 9.1 and have created various test products and libraries.

When we go production, I wish to delete them.

Similarly, after we go production, I will likelyneed to create more test products and libraries from time to time.
Again, I will want to delete those temp products and libraries.

I should not have to go through the extra overhead to hide or restrict them from people.

There are plenty of other reasons I can think of that would require deleting a product or library.
(Security, data retention rules, etc)

Don't take this wrong, but just because you cannot see a reason does preclude others from having a reason.

Different companies have different needs.

[Cosmo]

There is ALWAYS a reason for "delete" just like there's always a reason for "undo." What if you created 5 products in Windchill but your company only makes 4? While telling your boss "we need to grow our business and add a new product line to our business" sounds great and may get you promoted, the reasoning behind this statement is not the most solid. Honestly, this has the makings of a dlibert cartoon if I ever saw one.
Now, I'm sure there are some behind-the-scenes technical difficulties in performing this task on PTC's side. However, if they can't actually delete the product from the database but there's a way to hide it from everyone, then they should perform that "hide from everyone" function.....and put it under a "delete button."
There's a reason why the acronym CRUD was invented.....Create, Read, Update, Delete......"basic" functions according to Wiki.....

[ocorten-2]

LOL ... Thanks Mike for this very,very funny and all so true mail.

PTC, here's another use case:

We've created several products for all our current machines and one
Miscellaneous product for all our legacy machines.

Now in the future, more machines will become legacy and we would want to
move all that data to the Miscellaneous product, just to keep our
product list clean with only the current machines. So after that I would
want to be able to remove the emptied out products.

Mike's idea is perfect: we don't care if you just make it invisible for
everyone, but just put all the loops and holes to do so under one button
called "Delete Product".


Olaf Corten
CAD/PLM Manager, Besi Competence Center - Other Business Applications
Fico BV, Ratio 6, 6921 RW Duiven, The Netherlands
Tel.: +31 26 3196215

[HugoHermans]

I understand that your machines evolve from 'current' to 'legacy'. But
isn't this a life cycle issue? Instead of moving your data from one to
another container, wouldn't it be better to promote your product to the
next state in a life cycle?

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Kindest regards,

Hugo Hermans

-

NV Michel Van de Wiele
Michel Vandewielestraat 7
8510 Kortrijk (Marke)
Tel : +32 56 243 211
Fax: +32 56 243 540
BTW BE 0405 450 595
RPR Kortrijk

[mreece]

There are so many use cases.



As an administrative team, we can manage around the unwanted "Products"
with permissions and renames. But why?



It would be nice if PTC would comment on this thread. Perhaps this is
pending functionality. Perhaps there is some technical roadblock that
makes it difficult or impossible. Either way, it would be nice to hear
from them.

[gchampoux]

Can you imagine if PTC took this approach everywhere?
"Hey, you don't need to delete files or folders. You should just restrict access."

[ddemay]

I agree with what you saying here. Not sure about Intralink 9.1, but PDMLink products can be soft typed to have a discrete set of states, that one can use to easily filter or omit from searches.

Granted the CRUD vs. CRAP was hilarious point made, but I do believe it is a CMII violation to allow deletion of data. Well thought out and planned installations sometimes still require a company to modify it's procedures to work with the tool.

My guess is delete is missing because of being CMII compliant in earlier releases, but certication got expensive so PTC dropped it whilst maintaining the code.


Dave





Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

[BenLoosli]

I don't think anyone said anything about deleting data when they delete a Product or Library. They would have to empty in order to delete them, just like a folder must be empty.

Deleting an empty Product or Library should be allowed, but PTC hopefully has some technical reason why they can't. I realize there is more data involved with setting up Products and Libraries, but still all the things that get created should be able to be deleted. Yes, it is more work, but it should be doable.

One comment was made about test systems and I agree that they are critical to help in understanding Windchill and for experimenting with. Build a base system and back it up so you can always restore to a known point and try again.

Thank you,

Ben H. Loosli

[Cosmo]

I'm not so sure I'm buying that CMII says you can't delete data. I'm sure you can't delete anything you've released and sent to a customer. But surely you can delete items that have yet to be released. Windchill has Purge capability so they have the ability to delete/remove items not released. Actually.....I feel pretty certain that the Purge function could also delete Released data too....which is probably why we never purge anything at our company....we're all too afraid we'll delete something we need and hard drive space is still cheap.
So the ability to delete exists in certain areas within Windchill, but not everywhere that it should or could.
For full disclosure, I used to work at PTC (more on the Pro/E side) so I know there is always much more to these decisions than what we think/say on this exploder. There is the whole "making a business case" and presenting it to management to get certain enhancements in the product and getting the resources lined up to work on these tasks. Enhancements like "delete" are great (and honestly, I cannot believe that I have to call "delete" an enhancement)....but let's face it.....it's not a capability that is going to sell Windchill to the next customer. And it's also not mission critical to existing customers. Not being able to delete is not going to bring your business to a halt. It's an inconvenience....an annoyance.
So from a business point of view, this would be a low priority item. This means that it gets addressed by the developer who thinks that programming is "fun" and decides to put in a few hours building it in on the side while sitting in his pajamas in his parents' basement on Christmas morning 🙂
To put this decision in terms more relevant to the Pro/E users out there, it's like having a design fully released (all drawings, parts, assemblies are released....publishing is done....everything is completed), and then having someone from marketing come back and ask you to change the colors on the models. Sorry, but this isn't going to happen.
So in summary.....I understand why it would be slow to get it into the product.....and I'm sure there is a valid reason why it wasn't included at the beginning. But it still would be nice to have....especially on those days when I'm sitting in my parents' basement on Christmas morning just playing around with Windchill trying to do some cool slick new stuff.

Mike -