A full description of the deactivation feild can be found here
http://drupal.star.bnl.gov/STAR/comp/db/time-stamps
Briefly, it is the field that removes a record from a particular query based on time. This allows for records that are found to be erroneous, to remain available to older libraries that may have used the values.
The deactive field in the database is an integer, that contains a UNIX Time Stamp.
IMPORTANT - entryTime is a timestamp which will get changed with an update - this needs to remain the same...so set entryTime = entryTime.
To deactivate a record:
1) You must have write privileges on robinson
2) There is no STAR GUI or C++ interface for this operation so it must be done from either the MySQL command line or one of the many MySQL GUIs e.g., PHPAdmin, etc.
3) update <<TABLE>> set entryTime = entryTime, deactive = UNIX_TIMESTAMP(now()) where <<condition e.g., beginTIme between "nnnn" and "nnnn">>
4) do a SELECT to check if OK, that's it!