Looking to Mass delete records from an instance.

scottangehr · ‎05-25-2017

We have a new sub-prod instance that has been cloned from prod, but there is a request to removed 11 yrs of history from this instance. I have a BG Script running but its taking an hour to delete 100 records. I have over 2m records to remove. Any thoughts or scripts to quickly wipe out all records on a table? Here's what I'm running.

var rec = new GlideRecord('incident');     
rec.query();     
while (rec.next()) {         
gs.print('Inactive incident ' + rec.number + ' deleted');       
rec.deleteRecord();     
}

scottangehr · ‎06-01-2017

In working with ServiceNow, here is the option they suggested I try:

Navigate: Automated Test Framework > Administration > Table Cleanup

Click New
Tablename: <table to delete records>
Age in seconds: 1 day's worth of seconds (60x60x24 = 86400) or a week or whatever you want to keep
Cascade delete: true (that way it will clean up other data)
Then there are more conditions you can add.
Click Submit

Let the scheduled job Table Cleaner run it's schedule. To check and verify there is a scheduled job.

Navigate: System Scheduler > Scheduled Jobs

Search Name: Table Cleaner

*Note the Next Action Date/Time

If the scheduled job does not exist - create a new job to repeat every hour, but this is an OOB job and should exist.

Once the scheduled job has run and completed - DELETE THE TABLE CLEANUP you created. If not, you will continually delete the records from the table.

I was able to delete 1.8m records in about 6 hours.

View solution in original post

Nia McCash · ‎05-25-2017

Have you tried: Delete all records from a table ?

scottangehr · ‎05-26-2017

I did and it times out deleting only 9 records at a time

Pradeep Sharma · ‎05-25-2017

Hello Scott,

One of the suggestions I have is to delete records in chunks with the method setLimit. Please refer section 10.5 for more info.

GlideRecord - ServiceNow Wiki

Pradeep Sharma · ‎05-25-2017

Here is the best practice.

When you prepare to delete a large number of records from a table, consider the following guidelines to minimize the impact on performance.

Limit the number of records to be deleted in a single delete action to prevent the table from being locked. Use the setLimit() method described at setLimit.
Minimize triggering an excessive amount of business rules as a result of this deletion. Use the setWorkflow(boolean e) method described at setWorkflow.

Modified code

deleteIncRec();

function deleteIncRec()

{

var rec = new GlideRecord('incident');

rec.setLimit(1000);

rec.query();

while (rec.next()) {

   //gs.print('Inactive incident ' + rec.number + ' deleted');

   rec.setWorkflow(false);

   rec.deleteRecord();

}

}