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Automated deletion is something that has always made me very cautious, to the point that I usually opt to have my code send a notification to myself or the team
by nnf 4y ago
Automated deletion is something that has always made me very cautious, to the point that I usually opt to have my code send a notification to myself or the team saying “it’s time to delete x and y” instead of letting the system perform the deletion on its own. In some lower-risk cases, I’ll eventually automate the deletion, but only after a long period of time with no false positives. This strategy has served me well over the years, helping identify edge cases that would have been problematic.
- yabones 4y agoI like the method of adding a "deleted: true" flag to records that are ready to be deleted which makes them hidden in the UI, then log or email something like "INFO: 592 records to be deleted". Then, after another couple days or weeks, a really simple filter removes the "deleted" records.
- plasma 4y agoTo add to this, you can put destructive operations like this into phases, for example, before delete, a power off of the service has to happen, and the delete logic won’t run if the power off time hasn’t elapsed 7 days, etc. These safety layers help present destructive operations more visibly before they are completed.
- cbarrick 4y agoThere are often legal requirements for deletions to occur within a given amount of time. Depending on the volume of such requests, automation is often the only way.
- Someone 4y agoIf you automate everything but pulling the trigger legal time limits rarely will be a problem. For destructive actions, putting a few days between “take server offline” and “throw disk into the shredder” often is possible, too.