How to avoid polluting P6 database with unwanted POBS and RISKTYPE?

For the past few years, I’ve been receiving P6 native files (i.e., XER files) from different contractors for review and approval. One of the common issues that I usually encounter is receiving big native files that contain unwanted and irrelevant data. Importing these native files into P6 can take a long time and once imported, these files can pollute the destination P6 database and disrupt its integrity.

I highly recommend examining all native files before importing them into the P6 database, however, as a rule of thumb, a P6 native file that is more than 1 MB in size, has a higher chance of being contaminated and the file should be examined meticulously before being imported.

When it comes to large native files, the “POBS” and “RISKTYPE” tables are usually the culprits.

POBS stands for Performing Organization Breakdown Structure, and POBS tables got introduced at some point during release 8.3. These tables were initially designed to store specific data however it seems for some reason these tables were not fully utilized in P6 software developments. POBS data in P6 native files are not really needed and can be deleted from the native files. Some experts believed taking Oracle’s sample projects during P6 installation could introduce these POBS junk data to the P6 database.

In terms of “RISKTYPE” data, sometimes you’ll be shocked by the number of “Risk Categories” that can be found in a native file under the RISKTYPE tables. In one case I found more than 250,000 risk categories in a P6 native file I received from a contractor.

A native file with unwanted risk categories can contaminate the destination database. The destination database then could share their large number of risk categories to another database. Whenever, the RISKTYPE tables are passed along, they grow exponentially, spreading and contaminating more and more databases.

The RISKTYPE tables can contain circular references which cause P6 to crash. Furthermore, gibberish characters (i.e., special characters like diamonds, boxes and other non-standard characters) appear in a lot of Risk Categories and occupy space in the P6 database. These issues can cause significant performance issues with both export and import of XER files.

Fig.1. Risk categories with gibberish characters

There are several methods that can be used to overcome this problem. 3 of these methods are explained here briefly:

1. Method#1: in this method, the unwanted data from both the source and destination databases are deleted. Then the XER file will be exported from the clean database (the source) and this file will be imported into the destination database.
2. Method#2: in this method, the schedules will be exported from the source database in XML format and the risk categories will be skipped during the import into the destination database. The challenge here is that the XML files are normally much larger than the equivalent XER files and would take much longer to import, so if you are receiving native files for review on a regular basis, XML is probably not the best option.
3. Method#3: in this method, a text editor (e.g., Wordpad) will be used to open and edit the XER file, and the POBS and RISKTYPE data will be deleted from the XER file. This can be a time-consuming method particularly when there are thousands of records. This should be done carefully to ensure information other than the POBS and RISKTYPE are not removed from the native file, otherwise you might end up with a corrupted XER file.

The aforementioned methods are usually time-consuming and can be impractical and risky.

To overcome this challenge, I developed an Xer cleaner tool which can remove POBS and RISKTYPE data from native files safely in no time. A copy of this free tool can be downloaded from the link below:

This XER Cleaner tool is very easy to use. Simply launch the XER cleaner, browse to the XER you want to clean and click Run. The XER will be cleaned of all POBS and RISKTYPE records and the clean file is saved in the same directory with the original file name appended with “_CleanCopy”.

Fig.2. Main window of the developed XER Cleaner

Fig.3. The user is informed once the process is complete.

Tip: In case your P6 database contains unwanted risk types follow the next few steps to get rid of the undesirable risk types:

Go to the “Admin” menu and select “Admin Categories…” and look under the Risk Categories tab you may see a lot of junk risk types there. To clean these you will have to manually delete them.

Fig.4. Risk categories under “Admin Categories”

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