We now have a single source of truth concerning Purging in My Oracle Support. The material is contained within the SOA 11g Infrastructure Database: Installation, Maintenance and Administration Guide under the 'Purging' tab.

All of the previous purge related content for 11g is now deprecated and many of the documents will redirect to this Guide while others simply contain a disclaimer.

What does the Guide contain?

• Summary Overview of Purging. What it does and why it's important
• Specific information on each release of 11g
• Available patches for each release of 11g and recommendations
• How to run the different purge scripts
• Tips on improving performance
• How to begin troubleshooting problems with the process
• How to identify orphaned records
• Useful reference information

Here are a couple of screen shots to help with navigation:

Guide Landing Page:


(click image for full view)


Select the 'Purging' tab:


(click image for full view)


The left menu contains the following options:

• Alternative: Database Partitioning
• What to do on 11gR1 GA (11.1.1.1)
• What to do on PS1 (11.1.1.2)
• What to do on PS2 (11.1.1.3)
• What to do on PS3 (11.1.1.4)
• What to do on PS4 (11.1.1.5)
• Overview of PS5 (11.1.1.6)
• Purging Step by Step
• Performance Tips
• Troubleshooting Purge
• Orphaned Records
• Reference

This resource goes hand in hand with the excellent documents SOA 11g Database Growth Management Strategy and Start Small, Grow Fast available on OTN.

The latest product documentation can be found here.