How to implement soft delete handling in Qlik Replicate from DB2 to Redshift?

[Bishnu123]

Hi Qlik Community,

I'm working on a Qlik Replicate task where the source is  DB2 LUW  and the target is Amazon Redshift, using Full Load + CDC.

I want to implement soft delete logic — so that when a row is deleted in DB2, it is not removed from Redshift, but instead updated with a "soft delete flag".

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 Use Case:

Source (DB2):

id	name	phone
1	abc	23456789
2	dce	1234567890
3	efd	1234567890

Action in DB2:

• Row with id = 3 is deleted.

Desired result in Redshift:

id	name	phone	is_deleted	deleted_at
1	abc	23456789	false	NULL
2	dce	1234567890	false	NULL
3	efd	1234567890	true	2025-06-25 15:00:00

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🔧 My Current Settings:

• Full Load: Drop and Create Table

• CDC:

  Any tips, validation, or best practices would be much appreciated.

  Thanks in advance!

[john_wang · Accepted solution]

Hello @Bishnu123 ,

Function operation_indicator can be used to support soft-delete.

When the operation_indicator function is invoked on its own or as part of an expression, records deleted from the source table will not be deleted from the corresponding target table. Instead, the corresponding target record will be flagged (with a user-provided value) to indicate that it was deleted from the source. For example if I add a new column "soft_delete" and its expression is like:

operation_indicator('DELETE', 'UPDATE', 'INSERT')

if the record is deleted from source side, the flag "soft_delete" column's value is "DELETE".

Hope this helps.

John.