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September 3, 2010
Question

How do you delete a Product or Library?

  • September 3, 2010
  • 17 replies
  • 4310 views

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

17 replies

22-Sapphire I
September 3, 2010
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
23-Emerald I
September 3, 2010
Mike is right, best option is to rename them to something else, reuse
them when you need to create another Product or Library.


September 3, 2010

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
23-Emerald I
September 3, 2010
Funny, that was the response I got when I called in once. Renaming
wasn't always possible.


1-Visitor
September 5, 2010
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.
>
>
12-Amethyst
September 6, 2010
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
8-Gravel
September 7, 2010

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

1-Visitor
September 7, 2010

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
September 7, 2010
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.
1-Visitor
September 7, 2010

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.....