How long each kind of data lives is a policy.
You declare how long each kind of data lives and the system enforces it.
A service you deploy.
Three kinds of data, three different answers
| What | Why you keep it | Typical life |
|---|---|---|
| Events | the calls and actions that were evaluated | shortest; this is where the volume is |
| Decisions | what an examiner or a disputing customer asks about | longest; often years |
| Review cases | the material a person was asked to judge | shortest of all; the most sensitive |
Data can move to cold storage on one schedule and be deleted on another, so a seven-year obligation does not mean seven years in your main database. A deletion is itself recorded.
Before you set the numbers
A review case nobody has decided is still removed when its window expires. That is correct behavior for a retention policy and a bad surprise in production, so set the review window from the size of your queue.