When to call the .process() method on a database?

[bsteubing]

To delete an activity completely (so that it is not used during LCA calculations anymore), we need to call database.process(). Issues with this:

• Currently the AB does not do this, so the deleted activites stay alive within, e.g. the technosphere matrix
• To call database.process() takes a couple of seconds, so it is probably not convenient to it after every activity deletion.

So: how to deal with this and when to call this?

[haasad]

• creating a bw.LCA-object calls clean_databases: code
• database.process is therefore called on any "dirty" database: code
• database is set dirty when an activity is deleted: code
• Since we create a new LCA-object for every calculation, database.process is always called before anything is caclulated

Only reason that I see to call database.process early would be to update the activity counter in the databases tab, ie a visual response that the activity was deleted. We could add a check like here to call process on small databases, but ignore it for larger ones where it takes too long. But in general I think we're safe and brightway takes care of this automatically.

[bsteubing]

OK, then the issue I had was still related to a change that I made to a database previous to the current setup as you describe it. Perfect, issue can be closed.