Creating Data Archiving Processes

Prerequisites

If you want to archive data from InfoCubes, connected InfoProviders must already be supplied with the data to be archived. The aggregates must be rolled up. Usually, the data should be compressed. If you do not want to do this, you can set the relevant flag in the data archiving process (see tab page Selection Schema).

If you want to use third-party near-line storage, the connection for the third-party solution must be implemented, and a near-line connection must be set up.

More information: Creating Near-Line Storage Connections

If you want to use SAP IQ as a near-line storage solution, you need to install and configure SAP IQ.

More information: Sybase IQ as a Near-Line Storage Solution

Procedure

Choose Create Data Archiving Process in your InfoProvider's context menu.
The data archiving process contains the same technical name as the InfoProvider. Enter a description.

Tab: General Settings

You can select whether to use ADK-based archiving, near-line storage, or both.

Various archiving tab pages for archiving are displayed, depending on your selection.

Tab: Selection Profile

You specify which data from the InfoProvider is selected for the archiving session.

As far as the selected time characteristic is concerned, the time slice archiving always creates time intervals that directly follow on from one another. These can be connected, with conditions, to additional, time-independent partitioning characteristics. You can use these characteristics to further refine the selection.

Note

To create the best possible conditions for using queries subsequently on near-line storage, the selected time characteristic must also be highly relevant for the queries.

For a DataStore object, you can only select a key characteristic as the partitioning characteristic in time slice archiving. This is necessary in order to ensure that the archived records are consistent, which is not the case with non-key fields. The characteristic for the time slice generation can also be a non key characteristic. However, you then have to select a separate partitioning characteristic from the key with a monotonous time reference and that the time conditions can be applied to (such as Clearing Date in the data part and Document Number in the key). At runtime, the system attempts to apply the time restriction to a partitioning characteristic restriction. In the InfoCube, all characteristics always count as key characteristics. For more information, see SAP Note 1000784.

You cannot select constant values as characteristics for time slice archiving.

You can also define that non-compressed data can be archived. If you do not compress, you can save time and memory space. You can change this setting while the system is running. However, you should only do this once all archiving runs have finished. You also need to be aware of the effect this has when deleting requests. More information: Tab Page: Requests.

Tab: Semantic Group

You can form semantic groups to sort the data for archiving.

The system reads from the database after sorting according to grouping characteristics (the order is important). Records with the same specifications in the grouping characteristics are written to the archive as one data object.

If no characteristic is selected, the storage in the archive is not sorted, and technical criteria are used for classification (fixed size) into data objects.

Tab: ADK

This tab page is only available if you selected ADK-Based Archiving in the General Settings.

Specify the logical file name.
Define a maximum size for the generated archive files. You should take the memory capacity of your storage medium into account. It can be restricted by the number of data objects. The limit that is reached first is decisive. During an archiving run, a new file is created when the maximum size is reached.
You can set how the deletion jobs will be started. You can schedule the deletion jobs manually, automatically after verifying the archived data, or after triggering a defined event.

Caution

If you want to archive data using a process chain, you should NOT select Start Automatically.
You can specify the storage system and delete sequence. You only need to enter the storage system and delete sequence if you are using a separate storage system.

Tab: Near-Line Storage

This tab page is only available if you selected Near-Line Connection in the General Settings.

Specify a maximum size for the data package. You should take the memory capacity of your storage medium into account. It can be restricted by the number of data objects. The limit that is reached first is decisive. During an archiving run, a new data package is created when the maximum size is reached.
Activate the data archiving process. If the data archiving process is active, it is no longer possible to change many of the settings.

More information: Changes to the Data Archiving Process

Result

Depending on how the archiving process is modeled, an archiving object or a connection to near-line storage is generated.

For ADK-based archiving, an archiving object is generated in the local system. The namespace for archiving objects consists of "BW" as the prefix, then a character for the object type ("C" = InfoCube, "O" = DataStore object A version), and finally the object name. Only seven characters are available for the name, since only ten characters are available for the whole name.

You can now schedule the data archiving process. See:

Near-line and ADK-based data archiving processes: Scheduling Data Archiving Processes Using Process Chains
Purely ADK-based data archiving processes: Scheduling Data Archiving Processes (ADK-Based)
Manual request processing: Creating and Executing Archiving Requests