Option 1). NO PARTITIONING

When the database was built without the partitioning option, the process deletes all entries relating to a certain domain object based on the policy “current date – (retention period)”.  This means, if the retention period is one day, and the current date is 27.02.2012 00:00:00. All data that is older than 26.02.2012 00:00:00 will be deleted. Consequently, when you log in to the system on 27.02.2012 15:00:00, you will see data from 26.02.2012 00:00:00 until then. Data relating to 25.02.2012 should not be visible. Data is deleted in batches of 10.000 records so as to not overwhelm the database. In large installations, this process can run many minutes or even hours.

Option 2). WITH PARTITIONING (recommended setup)

When using partitioning in the database, the process will check for the MAXIMUM retention setting for ALL domain objects.  For example, Process1.process has a retention setting of one day and Process2.process has a retention setting of two days. If the current date is 27.02.2012 00:00:00, the process checks for the MAX setting of two days and drops all partitions older than 25.02.2012 00:00:00. If you log into the system on 27.02.2012 15:00:00, you will see data from both Process1.process AND Process2.process that relates to dates after 25.02.2012 00:00:00. Note that this job will only delete data relating to process instances. It will not delete domain objects or other data from the database. Even if this job deleted all data of process instances of a particular domain object, the domain object will still be available in the technical view. 

Currently BWPM does not have any tool that will help in cleaning the BWPM GUI and existing Business Objects will never be deleted from the view. To delete them, the user has to delete them from the database table. This feature is being considered for a future BWPM release.