Fix console command parameters documentation for optimizing the database

[heurteph-ei]

Documentation URL

https://matomo.org/faq/on-premise/managing-your-databases-size/#purging-and-optimizing-the-database-using-a-console-command

Citation

To reduce execution time, you can select specific date periods to run these scripts for. This means that you can target just the recent > months, for which report data is likely to have changed. Note that data for annual reports is stored in the archives for January of the > appropriate year, so it is a good idea to optimize these regularly as well, e.g.

./console database:optimize-archive-tables last2
./console database:optimize-archive-tables january

We recommend to set up above two commands as a cronjob and have them executed once monthly.

Problem

(Last 2 what? Days, weeks, months, years? Which January? Why only 2 examples? etc.)

But after some trial & error, I figured out at least some of the format:

./console database:optimize-archive-tables 2020
./console database:optimize-archive-tables january-2020
./console database:optimize-archive-tables october-2022

Still a little confusing, because everything else in Matomo uses the YYYY-MM-DD (or at least YYYY-MM) format, but at least it’s something! Not sure why they did it that way, it might be that the tool is only supposed to be used for months or something, not sure.

Source

https://forum.matomo.org/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-purge-old-data-if-it-has-never-been-run-in-12-years/38721

More

Maybe the date format could also be consistent on the whole Matomo API/functions (then another technical issue should be created, I let Matomo team decide...)

[MatomoForumNotifications]

This issue has been mentioned on Matomo forums. There might be relevant details there:

https://forum.matomo.org/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-purge-old-data-if-it-has-never-been-run-in-12-years/38721/3

[sgiehl]

@justinvelluppillai how shall we handle such documentation related issues? Shall we directly have a look at those and fix it if possible, or maybe forward them to support/website team, so they can have a look? Putting them into prioritization queue doesn't sound useful though.

[justinvelluppillai]

@sgiehl if it's simple enough to add examples or otherwise fix then you can provide improvements directly otherwise they would go through normal prioritisation via the backlog.

[matomoto]

Important question about this documentation page (linked in topic): https://matomo.org/faq/on-premise/managing-your-databases-size/#purging-and-optimizing-the-database-using-a-console-command

This documentation page is also the (only) documentation about purge-old-archive-data (./console core:purge-old-archive-data all). The missing information about this command is: Touch this command the log/raw data? Include this command the setting of delete_logs_enable in the global.ini.php? This infos are important needed in the documentation (and here as an answer).