Remove POBS Data From XER File

A client is uploading a XER file into P6 database. The file is large because it contains POBS data, and it took hours to import into the database. Overall, the POBS defect affect the performance of the application and users lose valuable during the import operation.

What can ScheduleCleaner do about POBS Data?

According to the Oracle’s Knowledge base [Doc ID 1967569.1], the P6 functions related to POBS table have not been implemented yet so the table exists in the P6 database but is not supposed to be used.

“We do not utilize the POBS table yet we export/import the data from this table when completing XER Export/Import. The XER export/import should be written to exclude this data with XER export/import operations of P6 Professional.”

Accordingly, the POBS data can be removed without any consequence.

ScheduleCleaner can “clean” several categories of data from a XER file including POBS data. The solution is simple and only need to upload the XER file into ScheduleCleaner, select POBS for removal, and click on the "Ready to Clean" button.

The Outcome

After removing POBS data with ScheduleCleaner, the file size of a large XER file should be viably decreased, thus reducing the time to import the XER file into a database.

In our example below, a project with only 132 activities and file size of 3517KB was reduced to 244KB. Imagine a XER file with thousand of activities and hundreds of MB in size. It would certainly need a few hours to upload such a file into a database.