Archiving Streams

Polecat supports archiving event streams to logically remove them from active queries without permanently deleting the data.

Archiving a Stream

session.Events.ArchiveStream(streamId);
await session.SaveChangesAsync();

This sets is_archived = 1 on both the pc_streams and pc_events tables for the stream.

Effects of Archiving

When a stream is archived:

• FetchStreamAsync excludes the archived stream
• The async daemon's event loader skips archived events
• Attempting to append to an archived stream throws InvalidStreamException

Unarchiving a Stream

Restore an archived stream:

session.Events.UnArchiveStream(streamId);
await session.SaveChangesAsync();

This sets is_archived = 0 on both tables, making the stream active again.

Tombstoning (Hard Delete)

For permanent removal of a stream and all its events:

session.Events.TombstoneStream(streamId);
await session.SaveChangesAsync();

WARNING

Tombstoning permanently DELETEs the stream record and all associated events from the database. This cannot be undone.

Tombstoning works with both Guid and string stream IDs.

Archiving vs Tombstoning

Operation	Reversible	Data Preserved	Use Case
Archive	Yes	Yes	Soft removal, compliance holds
Tombstone	No	No	GDPR right to erasure, cleanup