Usenet Explorer

Hi
I've read though the help file and newspro website help pages a few dozen time yet I'm still not fully comprehending what Newspro is doing exactly when I tell it to delete, purge, or reset and how it affects XPAT searching

This past week, I've been experimenting with different newspro settings to find the best setup for my system.

my newsgroups settings are set at: All headers, natural retention, "the rest" = delete, Purge Del Headers = Yes
Also, the "Deleted/Read Track after leaving groups" = 14 days

I've got 2 servers set up to retrieve headers, the rest are all set for message ID direct. Have it set up to auto get new headers each hour.

Anyways, I'll open a newsgroup.. I'll scan through all the headers.. if I see somthing I want to download I'll select them and hit ALT+L to put it on the download-later queue. When I'm done, I apply my filter to the newsgroup that hides all of the headers that are queued for download. Then I envoke a ALT+SHIFT+X to delete all the remaining headers in the group. I'm not interested in these headers so I see no reason for keeping them. Then I close the newsgroup. If I reopen it, the only headers I'll see are the ones that I want to download. I'm fine with that. My database is kept nice and compact.

I read somewhere that the headers I deleted & purged are still saved somewhere for 14 days (or whatever its set at on the General->Properties tab). This is to keep headers I deleted and purged from coming back into the database, right? Even though they may be on the server still. What happens when I reset the newsgroup? Does that 14 day thing continue to apply when I do a rescan of headers?

What if I create a new XPAT search on the newsgroup. If I deleted and purged a header on the group previously, will it not show up in the XPAT group because of the 14 day thing?

I just ran a test to see if this was the case.. I subscribed to a new newsgroup.. picked out a header with a date of Sept 25th... then i deleted all the headers in the test group.. Opened a new XPAT search for that group looking for that header... the XPAT results only found headers that matched the criteria that had a date-time newer than when I deleted all the headers from the group. Even though there were headers on the server that matched the XPAT criteria, newspro refused to show them because they had been deleted and purged previously.

How can I get the XPAT search to show everything it finds? Even if I deleted a matching header in the past. What does the reset function do on an XPAT group?

Ideas, suggestions, comments are very welcome.
Thanks

My understanding of this is that, with purging disabled, when you delete a header it is tracked in the local database for 'x' number of days. You can then invoke "Show deleted" to view them again within this time frame. With purging enabled, the database is purged of these headers every time you close/reopen the newsgroup. If you have purging enabled for all groups, then the tracking setting is superfluous.

As far as XPAT is concerned, any header that meets the search criteria that has been previously downloaded and deleted will show up after invoking "Show deleted." If it has been purged from the local database, it will show up as new.

Resetting simply starts everything over again, in case you want to redownload headers from scratch.

Now, as I don't use purging, I could be mis-stating here. I typically keep the retention to 1-3 and tracking to 7 days, which keeps my local database size managable.

If I'm wrong about any of this, hopefully someone will jump in and correct.

Ran some more experiments with my newspro setup

I set purging to be enabled for all groups
Opened a newsgroup and downloaded all headers that are on the server
Deleted every header
Closed the newsgroup (to make it purge)
Reset the newsgroup
Rescanned headers

The only headers in the group are now new headers that werent a part of the ones I deleted

when I change the Track for x number of days to "0" (thereby disabling it)
then Rescan headers again

All the headers that were once deleted & purged come back
Now if only I could get this to work for XPAT groups only.

Whenever I set the "Deleted/Read track for n days" to zero. I click OK and
when I go back to the properties I find that it has reset itself to 3 days...

It wont stay disabled.

anyone else having this happen too?

set purging to be enabled for all groups
Opened a newsgroup and downloaded all headers that are on the server
Deleted every header
Closed the newsgroup (to make it purge)
Reset the newsgroup
Rescanned headers

The only headers in the group are now new headers that werent a part of the ones I deleted

Resetting the newsgroup should have allowed you to pull all the headers again. Did you by chance select view deleted headers to see if they were hiding that way?

I would think by purging you would eliminate the headers from the database, maybe not. Or perhaps it's necessary to restart the program for that to happen (OK, I'm guessing here... ).

Whenever I set the "Deleted/Read track for n days" to zero. I click OK and
when I go back to the properties I find that it has reset itself to 3 days...

It wont stay disabled.

I'm not positive, but I think I recall Alex mentioning that this was by design (something about if it were set to zero, NP would continue to pull the same headers again and again).

Think I figured it out...

If purging is disabled
When I delete a header they only way to see it again would be to click the "view deleted" and then ALT+J the header to undelete it..

If purging is enabled
After I delete a header theres no way to get it back unless I first disable purging and then rescan headers.

It looks like I'm going to have to decide
Do I want a small database but not be able to see all XPAT results
= (purging enabled)
or
Do I want to be able to view all results from an XPAT search even if the header was deleted previously at the cost of having every header stay in the database (marked as deleted, but still taking up room in the database)
= (purging disabled)

I'll try the purging disabled option first... if I run into problems in the future due to enormous database size I may reconsider.

Thank you for your help Bruce73

If purging is enabled
After I delete a header theres no way to get it back unless I first disable purging and then rescan headers.

I guess that makes sense. I guess... As I said, I don't use purging. Glad you figured it out.

BTW, have you considered using different databases as a way to manage all of those headers?