Reducing Data Stored in LS Central SaaS Database

Monitoring and Managing Data Storage in Business Central Online

In Business Central Online, administrators have built-in tools to analyze how database storage is used across environments and to perform standard data maintenance tasks without requiring custom development.

Analyzing Storage Usage

Tenant administrators can begin by reviewing storage consumption through the Admin Center. This provides an overview of storage usage per environment. From there, it's possible to drill down further and view the storage distribution across individual tables.

Selecting the option to view table details opens the Table Information (Page 8700). This page shows key metrics for each table, including:

Number of records
Average record size
Total table size
Index size
Compression method (if applicable)

While this page is useful for analysis, it does not allow direct data maintenance actions.

Data Administration Page

Starting with version 18.2, Business Central introduced the Data Administration page, which provides a more comprehensive and actionable overview of database usage.

After refreshing the data, the page presents:

Table Insights

A list of tables with detailed metrics such as:

Number of records
Total data size
Size growth over the last 30 days
Percentage growth over the last 30 days

This information helps identify which tables are growing rapidly and which remain relatively unchanged. Tables with little or no growth may be suitable candidates for optimization techniques such as data compression.

Company Storage Overview

A breakdown of storage consumption by company within the environment, along with the total environment size. This helps pinpoint which companies contribute most to overall storage usage.

Data Cleanup Capabilities

The Data Administration page also provides built-in actions for cleaning up data. These actions are available without customization and cover several common data areas, including:

Change Log Entries
Document Archives
Posted (invoiced) documents
Marketing-related data
Cost accounting entries
Physical inventory ledger entries

Each cleanup operation runs through a report interface where filters can be applied to define exactly which data should be removed.

More information here: Microsoft Learn - Manage storage by deleting documents or compressing data - Delete documents

LSC Delete Logs

LS Central includes a dedicated codeunit - LSC Delete Logs - designed to clean up operational and log data that accumulates over time across several areas of the solution. This codeunit can be scheduled as a job queue entry, making it easy to incorporate into a regular maintenance routine.

The purpose of LSC Delete Logs is to remove data that is transient by nature: scheduler and replication logs, action queue records, replenishment calculation data, discount performance entries, forecast data, and POS logs. Left unchecked, these tables can grow significantly and contribute to unnecessary database bloat. In addition, the codeunit delegates cleanup for printed labels and finished batch posting jobs to dedicated utility codeunits within those respective areas.

The following tables are cleaned up by LSC Delete Logs, grouped by area:

Action Tables

LSC Actions
LSC Preaction
LSC Delete Preaction
LSC Commerce Action

Scheduler / Replication Logs

LSC Scheduler Log
LSC Preaction Log

Replenishment

LSC Replen. Out of Stock Log
LSC Replen. Sales Hist. Adj.
LSC Replen. Planned Sales Dem.
LSC Replen. Planned Event
LSC Release Calendar Log Entry
LSC Release Cal. Log Detail

Discount Performance

LSC Actual Disc. Performance
LSC Planned Disc. Performance

Retail Forecast

LSC Forecast Entry
LSC Forecast Dimension Entry

Actionable Insights (ACI)

LSC ACI Signal
LSC ACI Alert
LSC ACI Alert Detail
LSC ACI Notification

POS

LSC POS Log

Others

LSC Shelf Label
LSC Shelf Label Batch
LSC Shelf Label Spool
LSC Item Label

Retention Policies for LS Central Tables

Business Central's Retention Policies feature allows administrators to define rules for automatically deleting records from specific tables after a configurable retention period. LS Central extends this feature by registering a set of its own tables as candidates for retention policies.

While some of these tables are also covered by the Transaction Archiving feature, it is worth considering whether archiving is actually necessary for all of them. Many of these tables contain operational or diagnostic data - such as logs, print buffers, and temporary calculation data - that has limited long-term value and does not need to be preserved in an archive. For this type of data, a straightforward retention policy that deletes records older than a defined period is a simpler and more appropriate solution.

The following LS Central tables can be included in retention policies:

LSC Replen. Planned Sales Dem.
LSC Replen. Sales Hist. Adj.
LSC WS Request Log
LSC Web Applic. Restore Data
LSC POS Debug Log
LSC POS Print Buffer
LSC POS Print Header
LSC POS Print Line
LSC POS Card Print Header
LSC POS Card Print Text
LSC Price History
LSC Adj. Item Ledgers for RBO
LSC Wish List Header

Data Compression Options

To further optimize database size, date-based compression features are available. These include:

Compress Ledger Entries: Summarizes older entries over a defined period while preserving essential information
Delete Empty Registers: Removes unused register records

These operations also use standard processing reports that allow filtering before execution.

Note: You can only compress data more than five years old. If you want to compress data less than five years old, you need to use the OnSetMinimumNumberOfYearsToKeep event in the Date Compression codeunit to set the threshold.

More information here: Microsoft Learn - Manage storage by deleting documents or compressing data - Compress data with date compression

Data Archiving Capabilities

Transaction Archiving in LS Centrall helps keep transaction-related tables lean through two complementary tiers. The first tier moves older posted transaction records from the primary transactional tables into dedicated archive tables, still within the LS Central/Business Central database. Because archive tables carry fewer indexes, this reduces both database size and the load on core tables, resulting in faster searches, calculations, and operational processes.

The second tier takes archiving further by exporting records from the archive tables to an external Azure Storage Account, where each transaction is saved as a JSON file. Once exported, the records can be removed from the archive tables entirely, delivering a substantial reduction in overall database size. Since Azure Storage is considerably cheaper than additional Business Central database capacity, this also makes long-term data retention more cost-efficient.

More information here: Online Help - Transaction Archiving

Data Administration Guide

A guided experience is available to help configure and manage data-related processes. This guided setup assists administrators in:

Defining data retention policies
Identifying and reviewing unused companies
Applying date compression to selected ledger entry tables

Over time, ledger tables can significantly increase database size. Using compression helps reduce this growth while maintaining meaningful historical data.

Table size analysis

The following list is based on an analysis of table sizes across several large Business Central and LS Central environments. These are the tables most commonly found among the top space consumers.

Of these tables, two groups can be identified from a data maintenance perspective:

Standard Business Central tables (G/L Entry through Change Log Entry): The built-in BC Data Administration features and date compression tools give tenant administrators direct ways to reduce the size of these tables without custom development.
LS Central tables (tables prefixed with LSC): Dedicated cleanup and maintenance features within LS Central allow administrators to manage the data in these tables. These are described in the LS Central options section.

Most common largest tables

G/L Entry
Value Entry
Item Ledger Entry
G/L - Item Ledger Relation
Item Application Entry
Cust. Ledger Entry
Detailed Cust. Ledg. Entry
Warehouse Entry
Change Log Entry
LSC Transaction Header
LSC Trans. Sales Entry
LSC Trans. Infocode Entry
LSC Trans. Sales Entry Status
LSC Trans. Payment Entry
LSC POS Card Print Text
LSC Member Contact
LSC Membership Card
LSC Replen. Planned Sales Dem.
LSC Replen. Calc. Log Lines V2

Other possible improvements that should be considered (if applicable)

Aggregated Inventory

Using the Aggregated Inventory solution:

Slows down growth of Item Ledger and Value Entry tables
Compresses ILE and VLE records to AGRI entries
AGRI entries can be compressed and truncated

That can mean about 65% to 81% data reduction.

Duration improvements:

Statement Posting Cost - 30%
Item Adjustment Cost - 97%
Item Posting Cost - 34%

Moving from pre-actions to timestamps

Replicating data from Head Office to store companies is a common requirement in LS Central deployments. Historically, this was handled through Preactions — a mechanism that tracks and replicates only the changes (deltas) between companies. Over time, however, Preaction tables can accumulate a large number of records and become a significant contributor to database size.

Starting with LS Central v26, Timestamps are used for change tracking instead. This approach handles deltas more efficiently, substantially reducing the number of records held in the Preaction tables and leading to a significant decrease in their overall size.

More information here: Preactions - Timestamp Change Tracking

Inactivate Indexes (New in BC28)

In Business Central v28, Enhanced Index Management allows administrators to toggle database indexes on or off per company directly from the user interface. This optimization improves performance by speeding up write operations and lowering storage consumption.

More information here: Manage database index usage