OJS metadata_description_settings table

Is the metadata_description_settings (along with the metadata_descriptions) table used only for the citation markup assistant? I’ve noticed that the table has gotten rather large and we have subsequently shutoff the citation markup assistant - we’re using Edifix instead. Since we’re not using the citation markup assistant, can I empty the two tables?
Thanks.

Hi @sherwood,

Hmm, it’s odd that this has gotten so large – how big is big? How many rows are in that table? (What app and what version of it are you running?)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi Alex,

The file size of metadata_description_settings is ~51MB, 46000+ rows; metadata_descriptions is 6400+ rows and considerably smaller at ~820KB. We’ve only been running the system for a few months and we’re a very small journal - currently we have fewer than 150 manuscripts in the system. We did have all four citation extraction services running and the PubMed citation database connector but we’ve since shut off the Citation Markup Assistant and the file has not gotten any larger. We’re running Open Journal Systems 2.4.6.0.

Thanks,
S

Hi @sherwood,

Are you seeing any performance degradation? A 46k row / 51MB table is actually not very big by either metric.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hi Alec (sorry about the Alex),

Haven’t detected any performance degradation but I was wondering if the table is used by anything else besides the Citation Markup Assistant. I like to keep databases as lean as possible and since we’ve only been up and running a couple months, a 51MB table was a bit of a surprise, especially since it’s substantially larger than other other table. Anyway, if the table’s not used by anything other than the Citation Markup Assistant, I’d probably empty it since we’re currently not using the Assistant.

Thanks,
S

Hi @sherwood,

Yes, you should be able to drop the contents if you’re not using the citation assistant. Of course, it’s best to keep a backup of those two tables just in case.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Thanks Alec. Will make sure of very recent backup - I have no shortage of backups (kinda paranoid that way).