EDGEBIC Clear Data Tables Explained: The Reset Button With No Undo

EDGEBIC by User Solutions includes a Clear Data Tables utility that permanently deletes operating data, either from selected areas or from the whole database, behind a red hard-delete banner and a typed confirmation. There is no recycle bin. It exists for the three moments where wiping is genuinely the right answer, and it is built to make sure you are in one of those moments before it runs.

Every scheduling system needs this. The awkward part is that the same tool serves resetting a training database and destroying a production one, so the design of the guard rails matters as much as the feature.

When Clearing Is the Right Answer

There are three legitimate reasons to clear data.

Resetting a training or demo database. You have run a class through a full week of scheduling, and the next class needs the same clean starting point. Clearing the transactional layer and keeping the master data is the fastest reset there is.

Ending an evaluation cleanly. A pilot has produced a database full of experimental products, half-built routings, and jobs that were never real. Starting the real implementation on top of that is a permanent tax; starting it clean is not.

Starting a new planning basis. A structural change, a plant reorganization, a wholesale routing rebuild, sometimes makes the existing operating data more misleading than useful.

Everything outside those three is usually a different problem wearing a wipe's clothing. Bad imported data is an import mask problem. Screen layouts that look wrong are a layout reset problem. A schedule that looks wrong is a diagnostics problem. Clearing data solves none of those and forecloses on the evidence you would need to solve them.

The Two Modes

The utility opens from the Data Management tab of the Settings screen and offers a choice.

Clear Selected Tables. You tick the areas to remove. Each row can be expanded to show exactly what else it cascades to, which is the most important control in the dialog. Clearing an area removes what depends on it, and the cascade is rarely where people assume it is. Reading the expansion before you confirm is the difference between a scoped clear and a surprise.

Clear ALL Data. A full wipe: schedules, actuals, manufacturing orders, quotes, sales orders, products, routings, work centers, departments, shifts, holidays, and the per-user screen configurations that hold everyone's grid layouts.

The scoped mode is what a training reset should use. The full mode is what an evaluation cleanup should use. Choosing the full mode because the scoped one requires reading is how people lose master data they meant to keep.

What Survives

User accounts and sign-in records survive both modes by default. That is deliberate: after a wipe, an administrator can still sign in and rebuild, rather than being locked out of an empty system.

A separate tick box also clears users and the sign-in audit. It carries a real consequence, which the dialog states: with users gone, the next launch puts you back through creating an administrator account, exactly as on a fresh install. There are situations where that is what you want, handing a machine to someone else, or genuinely starting over. It is not what a training reset wants.

The roles and permissions you built live with the accounts, so clearing them means rebuilding those too.

The Guard Rails, and Their Limits

The dialog is built to slow you down. A red banner names the action as a hard delete. The mode must be chosen explicitly rather than defaulted. Selected areas show their cascades. And nothing runs until you type CLEAR into a confirmation box: no button-mashing gets you through it.

On success, the tool offers to restart, or counts down to one, because the application needs to come up against the emptied database rather than continue against stale in-memory state.

Here is the honest limit of all of that. A typed confirmation stops the accidental click. It does not stop the deliberate but mistaken clear, the one where somebody meant this and was wrong about the scope. Only a backup reverses that.

Back Up First, Every Time

The rule is simple enough to be a habit: take a backup before every clear, every mass re-import, and every database switch.

On a single-workstation setup the DataSource tab has an export control that creates a timestamped backup copy in one click, safely, while the application is running. On a shared SQL Server setup, the EDGEBIC database belongs in your IT team's normal backup rotation, and a clear is a moment to confirm that a recent one exists rather than assume it. Either way, the point is the same: a restorable copy turns an irreversible action into a reversible one, and it costs a click.

The database backup guide covers the mechanics, and keeping the database healthy over time covers the wider maintenance picture.

What a Clear Does Not Fix

It is worth saying plainly, because the utility gets reached for as a general reset.

A clear does not repair a database that will not open. That is a connection or a version-bookkeeping question, and it has its own recovery path that leaves your data alone. A clear does not fix a schedule you disagree with either: rerunning the scheduler, or reading the anomaly checks, tells you why a plan looks the way it does, and wiping the data destroys the evidence you would have needed to answer that. And a clear does not correct badly mapped imported data, because the next import will map it exactly the same way. The mask is the fix; clearing just gives you a clean surface to make the same mistake on.

The pattern behind all three is the same. Clearing removes symptoms along with everything else, which feels like progress right up until the cause produces them again.

The Toolbar Trap

One thing to know before anyone else finds it: the main toolbar's Reset to Default button opens this same dialog. Someone hunting for a way to restore screen layouts can therefore land in a data-clear dialog, which is a long way from where they thought they were going.

The layout-specific route is the right one to teach. Each view's own configuration dialog carries a reset that restores that view's defaults and touches no data, and the grid layout system is where per-user layouts live in the first place. Treat the red banner as a stop sign: seeing it when you expected a layout reset means cancel, not read on.

Where It Fits

Clear Data Tables sits with the administrative surfaces, next to the data source, security, and import, on the Settings screen. It is the one tool there that cannot be undone from inside the application, which is why it is worth understanding before the day you need it rather than during it.

The administration guide covers the wider set of administrative responsibilities, the complete EDGEBIC guide maps how the pieces connect, and /edgebic covers the platform as a whole.

Two Minutes of Preparation

The teams who use this utility comfortably all do the same thing: they take the backup, they read the cascade expansions, and they say out loud what they expect to still be there afterward. Two minutes. The teams who end up rebuilding master data skipped one of the three, and it is nearly always the backup, because the day you skip it is the day it turns out you were wrong about the scope.