List of tables to safely truncate in Magento?

Question

Is there a list of tables that can be safely truncated in Magento? By safely, I mean to preserve products.

I've got a few but want to know if there are more:

    core_url_rewrite # Only safe if no custom rewrites are in place
    catalog_product_flat_1
    catalog_product_flat_# (# depends on the multistore)
    log_customer
    log_quote
    log_summary
    log_summary_type
    log_url
    log_url_info
    log_visitor
    log_visitor_info
    log_visitor_online

Please note that this question is almost 8 years old now; do not just start truncating tables randomly; it's probably in your best interest to backup before you do anything.

Answer 1

Before you do anything

• Make sure you test clearing this data in a non-production environment first.
• Always make backups before you lose data forever.
• Make sure you're truncateing, not droping.
• Probably a good idea to reindex everything via shell after mass deleting records

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Update:

You can use this n98-magerun module to clean up your tables.

Or do it manually by following instructions below.

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To expand on Jim's answer, Magento Support doesn't need the contents of these tables when they ask for a copy of your DB, so you could consider them non-essential.

Cache tables

core_cache
core_cache_tag

Cache data is temporary. Clearing these should be safe.

Session tables

core_session

No need to keep year old sessions. New sessions will automatically be created (though it will cause people to be logged out/break a current checkout flow).

Dataflow tables

dataflow_batch_export
dataflow_batch_import

There are essentially logs of each time a batch is run and not critical.

Admin logs

enterprise_logging_event
enterprise_logging_event_changes

These are logs of which admins are doing what in the backend. Very nice for tracking down "who broke what" but don't need to be kept forever. You can safely truncate these.

Pro-tip: Make sure you're cleaning out old records in System > Configuration > Advanced > System > Admin Actions Log Archiving

Support tables

enterprise_support_backup
enterprise_support_backup_item

History of support from Magento, may or may not exist for you.

Index tables

index_event
index_process_event

A back log of index entries that need to be updated. However, they don't delete themselves once they're obsolete.

Log tables

log_customer
log_quote
log_summary
log_summary_type
log_url
log_url_info
log_visitor
log_visitor_info
log_visitor_online

Log data, mostly unused. However, I've seen "Sort by Most Viewed" modules use the log_visitor_info table so be cautious.

Pro-tip: Make sure you're cleaning out old records in System > Configuration > Advanced > System > Log Cleaning (this only does visitors, customers, and urls)

Report tables

report_event
report_viewed_product_index

These are aggregated tables that can be rebuilt when running reports.

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Other tables that can use a pruning once in a while are

Quote tables

sales_flat_quote
sales_flat_quote_address
sales_flat_quote_address_item
sales_flat_quote_item
sales_flat_quote_item_option
sales_flat_quote_payment
sales_flat_quote_shipping_rate

If having 3 year old abandoned cart data isn't important to you, consider truncating these. Keep in mind that current carts are in here, so schedule this during off hours or remove rows with updated_at older than X days.

Pro-tip: install Aoe_QuoteCleaner

Staging tables

If you use Enterprise's staging feature, you might start seeing tables with the s_ prefix. There is no clean up for these once the staging site is removed. If your enterprise_staging table is empty, you don't need these tables anymore.

Changelog tables

catalog_category_flat_cl
catalog_category_product_cat_cl
catalog_category_product_index_cl
catalog_product_flat_cl
catalog_product_index_price_cl
cataloginventory_stock_status_cl
catalogsearch_fulltext_cl
enterprise_url_rewrite_category_cl
enterprise_url_rewrite_product_cl
enterprise_url_rewrite_redirect_cl

Magento introduced MySQL triggers that write to change log tables when certain tables' data is modified. Later the scheduler indexer picks up the change log entries and updates the items. However, it doesn't clean up when it's done. You can clear these out from time to time.

Category and product flat tables

catalog_category_flat_store_1
catalog_category_flat_store_2
catalog_category_flat_store_3
catalog_category_flat_store_4
catalog_category_flat_store_5
catalog_category_flat_store_6
catalog_category_flat_store_7
catalog_product_flat_1
catalog_product_flat_2
catalog_product_flat_3
catalog_product_flat_4
catalog_product_flat_5
catalog_product_flat_6
catalog_product_flat_7

These tables I tend to drop. After a reindex they will re-create themselves. In some cases store 7 might not exist anymore but you still have the dead flat table.

URL rewrite tables

Be careful here, you may not want to truncate all of these.

core_url_rewrite
enterprise_url_rewrite

First check for any records that are is_system = 0. If so you won't want to truncate, you'll lose custom redirects. Try DELETE FROM core_url_rewrite WHERE is_system = 1 instead. Reindexing rewrites will re-populate this table with the rest.

More report tables

report_viewed_product_aggregated_daily
report_viewed_product_aggregated_monthly
report_viewed_product_aggregated_yearly

These are aggregated and can be rebuilt (like indexes).