Offline archive file management with piarchss

The offline archive utility uses the piarchss executable that runs the PI Archive Subsystem.

The offline archive utility works with archive files that are not registered with a running Data Archive server (that is, offline files). Data Archive server can continue to archive current data while you work on offline archive files. If you attempt to use the offline archive utility on a registered archive file, the utility unregisters the file.

Use the offline archive utility to:

• Combine archives

• Divide an archive file into smaller files

• Extract a specific time period from an archive

• Coerce data records to use the current digital state set

  Note: To recover a corrupted archive, see Archive reprocessing.

  Starting in Data Archive 2016 R2, if an event-queue file becomes corrupt, it is recovered automatically, whenever possible. For more information, see Automatic event-queue reset.

The offline archive utility can create fixed or dynamic archive files. Created files have the same format as archive files created by piartool -ac. Every archive file has a parallel annotation file created with the archive. The annotation file, which has the .ann file extension, must remain in the same directory as its associated archive file.