Manage offline archive files using piarchss

Use the offline archive utility to manage offline archive files. Run the offline archive utility from the ..\PI\bin directory. Data Archive can be running when using the offline archive utility, but the archives manipulated must be offline (that is, unregistered).

The offline archive utility uses the piarchss executable that runs 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). The running Data Archive can continue to store current data, while you manipulate offline archive files. If you attempt to use the offline archive utility on a registered archive file, the utility unregisters the file. You can use the offline archive utility to:

• Combine a number of archives together

• Divide a large archive file into smaller archives

• Extract a specific time period from an archive

• Recover a corrupted archive

• Recover events from an event-queue file

• Coerce data records to use the current digital state set

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.

To run the offline archive utility, run piarchss in console mode using special command-line arguments.