Azure Table Storage expiration

Question

Is there any way to delete items from Azure Table storage without creating a worker to delete based on timestamp ? I want some solution like in Azure cache service where we can specify time span for the message.

Retention

Answer 1

Table Storage is a durable store, and row entities don't have an expiration date. A committed write stays in storage until you delete it. You'd need some type of scheduled task to periodically clean out data based on timestamp or other metadata.

Merola

Alternatively, if you have a naming convention for your tables, you could purge old data by simply deleting tables. – Zeta

Thanks David and Igor. but i was expecting something like in azure cache service. Now i have to write a worker role which will periodically delete expired tables. i don't like it :( . – Retention

Sujith, a worker role is a Windows Server 2008 VM, and you do NOT need a worker role to simply clean up expired tables / rows. You simply need a background thread that runs on a timer or consumes queue messages informing it to perform a cleanup. Also: Azure Table Storage is a durable, persistent store. Just like a SQL Server table, data stays until you delete it. If you want data to age out, then use the Cache service (or other cache software). – Merola

Thanks a lot David... i wrote a background thread which is deleting now the expired data. i am new to ASP.Net and i was under the impression that backgroundthreads will work properly only in winforms . – Retention

AWS has this on dynamodb :( aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/02/… – Midbrain

@Midbrain How is that detail relevant? This is about Table Storage in Azure. It's not an AWS question, nor a compare/contrast of different cloud service features. Also: This question (and answer) is 5 years old, and there are many different ways to handle this nowadays (including TTL in other Azure data stores such as DocumentDB). But again, irrelevant. – Merola

You never know, a Sr Azure architect at Microsoft might stumble across this some day and think - wow, we should add this too ;) feedback.azure.com/forums/217298-storage/suggestions/… – Midbrain

Answer 2

You can create a new table every week for example and delete n-2 old tables. And always write to the nth table

Sholley