What would be the SQL script to generate Sitecore Broken Link Report - sitecore

Question

I'm helping our Editors to clean up broken links and have been looking for answers to the following:
The Broken Link Report cannot be exported or sorted so it's not very useful (we have many broken links ~2000). Is there a SQL script that I can run to create the same report?
If an Editor fix a link, Rerun the report doesn't seem to take the item off the report. Does she have to Rebuild Link Database every time?
The Links button in the menu is helpful, but it is listing All Versions of referrers. Is there a SQL script to find only the lastest version?
When delete or archive an item and let Sitecore remove broke links, will all the affected items be published?
We are dealing with a large report (~2000 items) due to not maintaining it diligently. The goal is to reduce the number to 100~200 and keep it under control from now on. Any general advice on how to clean up broken links report is appreciated.

Answer 1

For your first (and partly third) questions:
In the Core database you can check what gets executed on the click of the Broken Link Report (the item that defines it is located in : /sitecore/content/Documents and settings/All users/Start menu/Right/Reporting Tools/Scan for Broken Links.
The application that gets started is /Applications/Tools/Broken Links.aspx, so if we look at *webroot*/sitecore/shell/Applications/Tools/Broken Links/Broken links.xml, we can see that the code used for it is Sitecore.Shell.Applications.Tools.BrokenLinks.BrokenLinksForm in the Sitecore.Client assembly.
Using Reflector you can see what it's executing. For your requirements, what I would say would be the easiest is to create your own version of the BrokenLinksForm, possibly simply adding an export functionality on it, or modify the code so it only takes the latest version. From looking at it very quickly I think the code to change (which is actually in the nested Scanner class) is:
...
foreach (ItemLink link in Globals.LinkDatabase.GetBrokenLinks(database))
{
list.Add(link);
}
...
You could possibly check whether the link item is the latest version, possibly by using something like
...
var version = link.GetSourceItem();
if (version.Versions.GetLatestVersion().Version == link.SourceItemVersion)
{
list.Add(link);
}
...
While you're at it you could of course also put in some sorting functionality :-)
It doesn't translate 1-on-1 with the Links button in the menu, but it should give you some pointers in the right direction.
As to your 2nd question: I believe that yes, the Link database does need to be rebuilt. I don't know if Sitecore has a schedule set up by default, but you could create your own agent in the <scheduling> node in the web.config to do this after X time.
Your last question: If you delete or archive an item and have Sitecore remove the broken links the affected items will, by default, not be published. If you have an auto-publish set up it'll show up of course.