Collections provide a valuable tool for data maintenance tasks. A collection is a container for storing sets of objects from Tree and System Setup, independently of their placement in the hierarchies. A collection can be created via a search or an import, and all objects in a collection can be updated at the same time.
Collections and collection groups are found in the Collections hierarchy on the Tree tab. A 'collection group' can hold multiple collections and other collection groups. Refer to Creating Collections or Creating Collection Groups topic for more information.
Dimension dependencies and workspaces, among other settings, impact the results of a collection created from a search. For more information, refer to the Collection Considerations topic.
For more on data maintenance of collections and collection groups, refer to the Maintaining Collections topic.
Temporary Collections
The 'Temporary Collections' node is system-generated to store read-only collections created by a process, such as bulk update background processes, exports, profiles, and Web UI basket. The right-click menu on this node does not allow manual creation of new user collections nor deletion of existing temporary collections.
Temporary collections created by background processes (BGPs) are deleted automatically via the case-sensitive sharedconfig.properties file entry AutoDeleteBackgroundProcesses.AgeInHours.[processname]=[hours] when the BGPs are deleted. In this setting, the [processname] designation is replaced with the name of the BGP and the [hours] designation is how long to wait before deleting BGPs. For more information on this setting property, refer to the Create a Background Processes Maintenance Plan topic within the System Setup documentation.
For example, running a bulk update BGP creates three temporary collections. Setting the 'AutoDeleteBackgroundProcesses' property with 'BulkUpdate' as [processname] allows the related bulk update temporary collections to be deleted when the bulk update BGPs are deleted, based on the [hours] setting.
Manually deleting temporary collections is necessary when background processes have been manually deleted. Select a temporary collection, on the Maintain menu, click 'Force Delete & Purge', and select one of the following options:
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'Purge collection contents' - removes the contents of the collection but does not remove the root node.
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'Purge collection node' - removes the contents of the collection and also deletes the collection root node.