It is important to understand how archived data is to be used, if at all, before making any plans to move it off of the production system. Some users might want to purge the data, but first you should archive the data so if at a later date, it can be easily recovered. Your archive method can be as simple as a tape; however, it is important to remember that you might need to read this tape in the future. Archive data in a format that you can access at a later date. For your database, you should archive the data in a standard OpenEdge format, remembering to also archive all the files not included in an OpenEdge backup such as after-image and key store files. For your application, you should archive the information in a format that will not depend on third-party software.