When an application performs a hard delete, then the data is removed from the database and it can never be accessed again. MET/TEAM does not do that. Instead, it performs a soft delete, which means the record is only "marked" as deleted.
Most records in MET/TEAM have two fields to determine their visibility: lActive and lDeleted. If a record is inactivated, then the lActive field is set to 0 (false). An inactive record will not be visible or searchable unless its associated Find Screen's "Show Inactive" button is set. If a record is deleted, the lDeleted field is typically set to -1 (true) or in some instances it is set to 1 which also indicates a 'true' state. If lDeleted is true, the record can never be accessed through the MET/TEAM UI.
The main reason for this functionality is to support the MET/TEAM Mobile application and to allow deletes to be made both when a computer is checked out and in Mobile mode, or when a user is just logged into the MET/TEAM website. Another benefit of soft deletes is that data is never permanently gone, and it is usually still possible to recover them.
Note: Newer versions of MET/TEAM now have the menu item, Maintenance-->Data Cleanup that can be used to actually delete records that have been marked as deleted. If your version of MET/TEAM is 3.2 or earlier, this is NOT available for MET/TEAM Express versions but in versions 3.3 and newer, it IS available for MET/TEAM Express.
You must always be cognizant of lActive and lDeleted when writing data checks or reports, otherwise you may see unwanted data. Be sure to include the following snippet in your queries to filter out inactive/deleted data:
[Table].lActive <> 0 AND
[Table].lDeleted = 0