Certain StoreFront 6.0 merchants have reported problems involving the Walkin table in their database, especially for stores that experience heavy traffic. They have reported that the Walkin table accumulates a large number of records, increasing database size and potentially affecting web store performance. To address these concerns, some additional flexibility has been added to StoreFront 6 Service Pack 3 so that merchants can more effectively manage the deletion policy of the Walkin table and other related tables. First, a brief explanation of how the Walkin table is used within StoreFront 6.0: For each new customer that arrives at a StoreFront 6.0 store, a record is written to the Walkin table. This record contains enough information to uniquely identify that customer among the other customers browsing the site. In addition to the Walkin table, there are several related tables involved in tracking the contents of a customer's shopping cart while they are browsing the site. Entries are written to these tables as soon as the customer adds an item to their shopping cart.
Given that records are written to these tables for all customers, including both those who actually place orders and those who simply browse the web store's pages without actually completing an order, it is easy to see how these tables might quickly grow in a busy site. To prevent this growth from becoming a problem, StoreFront 6 web stores periodically delete records from the walkin table and related tables. By default, each record is deleted once it is more than 24 hours old. This value is appropriate for most merchants, but may be too lengthy of an interval for some high-traffic stores. With Service Pack 3, an additional configuration item has been added to the web.config file that will permit the merchant to set their own policy regarding the deletion of records in the Walkin and ShoppingCart tables.
To modify this policy, follow these instructions:
- Open your web store in Dreamweaver or FrontPage.
- Open the web.config file in a text editor.
- Find the following line of code:
<add key="CleanUp" value="1440" />
- Modify the value to represent the number of minutes you would like the store to wait between deleting records in the Walkin and ShoppingCart tables. (Note: 1440 minutes = 24 hours) We do not recommend setting this interval to less than 60 (1 hour).
- Save the web.config file, and make sure it is uploaded to the site.
Please note that the timer will begin counting down as soon as the store is loaded in a browser for the first time after modifying the web.config file. Once the timer has expired, it will run the necessary code to delete any records in the Walkin and ShoppingCart tables older than the specified time. For example, setting a value of 60 minutes will cause the process to run every hour, and to delete records that are older than 1 hour.
