A database-management system (DBMS) archives a record of a database table by updating the record's unique “Archived” field. This indicates that the record should be considered to have been archived despite the fact that the record has not been physically moved to a distinct archival storage area. When a query requests access to the table, the DBMS determines whether the query requests access to only archived data, only active data, or both. If both, the DBMS searches the entire table. Otherwise, the DBMS scans each record's Archived field to consider only those records that satisfy the query's requirement for either archived or active data. If the DBMS incorporates Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) technology, the DBMS combines this procedure with MVCC's time-based version-selection mechanism.