Data Archiving 

Use

Data archiving enables you to simplify InfoCube and ODS object administration and improve performance.

The Archive Development Kit (ADK) is used for this purpose. ADK is a tool from SAP NetWeaver for the development of archiving solutions that also prepares the runtime environment for archiving. Its main function is to read and write data to and from archive files. The ADK guarantees that the archived data is both release- and platform- independent.

See also Introduction to Data Archiving (CA-ARC)

Data archiving is used in SAP BW for data that is no longer needed in running analysis processes, but is still important in the creation of new InfoProviders, or which may need to be analyzed once more in exceptional circumstances.

Features

Data archiving allows you to archive data from InfoCubes and ODS objects.

You can access the function Archiving via the main menu in InfoCube and ODS object maintenance. Here you can maintain the properties of an archiving object. You can also select both the selection characteristics and the maximum size for an archive file. An archiving object is generated from these properties when a data target is archived. You access the administration for the respective archiving object using the context menu for the individual InfoProvider. You can schedule archiving sessions and call up further archiving functions from here.

The archive object Administration entry only appears in the context menu when an archive object has previously been generated for the InfoProvider.

An archiving session consists of a write-, delete-, and a storage phase. Archive files are stored during the write phase for a particular archive object, deleted from the database after the verification phase, and then stored in a storage system according to its definition in Customizing.

Special archiving run features:

·         The selection criteria control the archiving. No additional IMG entries (for example, document age) are required, as in SAP R/3 data archiving.

·         Data is not stored in multi-dimensional tables for InfoCubes, but in a flat structure.

·         Only the contents of the table for the active data are stored for ODS objects and not change log content.

·         Archiving information is not transferred to the data targets with data that has already been updated. That is, data from data targets stored nearby remains where it is and is not archived.

·         The delete phase is based in the selected archiving session selection criteria. Here, existing aggregates are either adjusted or newly created. The delete phase can take place at a different time to the write phase.

Archived data can also be extracted again from the BW archives. In the Scheduler, you can also read from archives. There is also an input help for the existing archive files here.