SharePoint 2007 AdminContent database size

Question

I have a SharePoint 2007 AdminContent database which has grown to over 10GB in size. Sadly it has not been well maintained for a period of 3 years.

Some high level background, the sharepoint installation has 4 portal web sites installed. They are used for light content management, with about 12 pages per each site that are updated on a weekly basis. Revision history is kept for each page update. There are only a handful of document libraries, which receive light use.

The individual content databases for the portal sites have reasonable and expected sizes. The size of AdminContent database is troubling, and causes backups to take a long time.

In the admincontent database I have determined that the "EventCache" table is the culprit of the database size. It has over 18 million records and by itself is nearly 10GB in size.

A google search on this database and table have turned up little useful information.

Any idea on how to purge this table through a supported sharepoint admin interface or tool (e.g. STSADM)?

Answer 1

These guys suggest deleting the records (though not supported)

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepointadmin/thread/290bd659-cbb2-49da-9c63-df951fa3e893

BUT

First, check that the service account has db_owner permissions (as explained in the link)

And also check what updates you have applied, you might need this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957691/

(which is part of SP2)

UPDATE

A supported way to clear the table

http://blogs.technet.com/b/vinitt/archive/2010/01/01/how-to-clear-event-cache-table-in-supportable-ways.aspx