Data Management in ServiceNow: Best Practices for Data RemovalSummaryData Management in ServiceNow: Best Practices for Data RemovalRelease1.0InstructionsKnow Your Data: Issue: Initiating a data removal process without a comprehensive understanding of your database footprint, largest tables, and the intrinsic value of your data could lead to uninformed decisions and risk of data loss.Recommendation: Prior to initiating any data removal, familiarize yourself with your database's overall landscape. Identify which tables are the largest and understand the value of the data they hold. This preliminary analysis will enable you to make informed, strategic decisions regarding which data can be safely removed and which should be retained for operational or analytical benefits. Perform Extensive Testing: Issue: Solutions are not fully tested on a sub-production instance that has a similar size dataset. Recommendation: Always conduct testing in a sub-production environment that closely resembles your production instance. Break Down Queries: Issue: Targeting the full dataset with one GlideRecord query can result in a non-responsive query.Recommendation: Break down your queries. Instead of attempting to retrieve years of data in one go, aim for a day or even an hour's worth of data at a time, then iterate. Avoid complex queries as these are typically slower. Single-Threaded Approach: Issue: Using a scripted single-threaded method can be inefficient.Recommendation: Segment your target dataset. Break it into 4 or 6 non-overlapping segments and process them across multiple jobs for better performance. Lengthy GlideRecord Queries: Issue: If the GlideRecord query takes more than a few seconds to fetch the target dataset, you're risking system performance issues.Recommendation: Always aim for efficient, query queries. If retrieval is slow, further refine or segment your dataset query. Plan your Timelines: Issue: Some customers commit to untested or overly optimistic timelines for data removal.Recommendation: Be realistic. If the data accumulation took years, its removal will likely take weeks to months. Patience ensures safe and thorough cleanup.