If you create retention policies in the workbench, you can use them in data archive projects that archive data to the Data Vault. You can also use the policies in retirement archive projects. If you create retention policies when you create a retirement archive project, Data Archive saves the policies so that you can use them in other archive projects

After you create retention policies, you can use them in archive projects. When you run the archive job, Data Archive assigns the retention policies to entities and updates the expiration dates for records. You can change the retention periods for archived records through Data Discovery. Change the retention period when a corporate retention policy changes, or when you need to update the expiration date for a subset of records. For example, an archive job sets the expiration date for records in the ORDERS table to five years after the order date. If an order record originates from a particular customer, the record must expire five years after the order date or the last shipment date, whichever is greatest.

To use an entity in a retention policy, ensure that the following conditions are met:

The entity must have a driving table.
The driving table must have at least one physical or logical primary key defined.

To create and apply retention policies, you might complete the following tasks: