Windchill Database

[RT_11397061]

Hello All,
As new person to Windchill Site Administration, I have question related to the Windchill Database.
I need to know about what actually is stored in the database tables.

I am referring to the actual storage that happens from Windchill Application to the Database server.
Specifically for situations as mentioned below.

1. Does database store only relations between WT part and CAD objects?

2. Whether it stores file location path on Product container of Windchill?

3. If entire CAD object is being stored (.drw , .prt, .asm) ?
4. Or database stores WT part and its structure for Bill Of Materials?

Thanks in Advance,
Rohan

[avillanueva]

The database stores pretty much everything but typically binary file content like CAD files, documents and attachments are all stored in a file vault that is setup on the Site Utilities File Server Administration.  If there is some issue with that, files can get stored in the BLOBS table of the database but this is not standard. In a word, the database stores everything. Lots of tables and relationships between objects, folders, users, containers, access rights, everything.

[RT_11397061]

Hello,

Thank you for the response.

As mentioned, the content like CAD files, documents in stored on the file vault, this refers to the Windchill application and the server where it is installed. The database servers are separate, and as mentioned, they store data in BLOBS table.

In case of disaster recovery situation, let us say the Windchill application server not available, then we can recover the CAD data from the database, correct ?

[avillanueva · Accepted solution]

No, if the Windchill server is not available, your data is not lost but very difficult to recover. Its critical in a DR setup that your Database, Application and File vaults are in sync, the one is not ahead or behind the other. CAD data or any other binary content should generally not be in BLOBS. There is settings that have become default to force content to vaults. This means your CAD data will most likely be in a vault folder. If you look in there, you will see a list of files with hashed filesnames. These are recorded in the database so you need the database to figure out what file is what. If you just have the databse, you essentially only have the meta data about the files, not the files themselves.

It is techically possible and you can find posts about this, to use queries from the database to identify files in the vault, what they actually are. it would be just a rename of the file but this is very complicated and frought with issues. This would be worse case DR in my opinion.