Deleting Attributes and Texts for a Characteristic

You are in the Modeling area in the Data Warehousing Workbench. In the InfoObject tree, choose Delete Master Data from the context menu of your InfoObject

or

You are in transaction for editing master data. By choosing Delete Values, you can delete master data.

When you delete master data, you can choose whether entries in the SID table of the characteristic are to be retained or deleted.

If you delete the SID table entry for a particular characteristic value, the SID value assigned to the characteristic value is lost. If you reload attributes for this characteristic value later, a new SID value has to be created for the characteristic value. This has a negative effect on the runtime required for loading. In some cases, deleting entries from the SID table can also result in serious data inconsistencies. This occurs if the list of used SID values generated from the where-used list is incomplete.

Delete, Retaining SIDs

For the reasons given above, you should choose this option as standard. If for example you want to make sure that individual characteristic attributes that are no longer needed are deleted before you load master data attributes or texts, the option of deleting master data but retaining the entries from the SID table is also perfectly adequate.

Delete with SIDs:

Note that deleting entries from the SID table is rarely necessary or useful. Deleting entries from the SID table does make sense if the composition of the characteristic key is fundamentally changed for example, and you want to swap a large record of characteristic values with a new record with new key values.

You can simulate master data deletion. The where-used list is then executed but without actually deleting any master data. Note the following however: The list of usages might not be complete, as no locks are set during the simulation.

You can choose whether the texts are deleted. If you set this flag, the system saves the where-used list for the master data in table form. The table is called /BI0/0W'TEMPTABID. You can find the table ID TEMPTABID in table RSMDUC_TEMPTABNM for an existing InfoObject for which field STATUS has value A or in the log of new master data deletion.

• Reuse of the master data where-used list, all SIDs: If you choose this option, the system takes the most recent master data where-used list for a given InfoObject, and all existing SIDs are used for the next deletion, regardless of whether they are used or not.
• Reuse of the master data where-used list, unused SIDs: If you choose this option, the system takes the most recent master data where-used list for a given InfoObject, and only unused SIDs are used for the next deletion.
• Reuse of the master data where-used list, used SIDs: If you choose this option, the system takes the most recent master data where-used list for a given InfoObject, and only used SIDs are used for the next deletion.

You can select search mode. The search mode signficantly impacts the runtime for the where-used list. The following search modes are available:

• O only one usage per value:

  Once the where-used list finds a value, the system no longer searches for this value in the other InfoProviders. This search mode is the default setting. This mode is useful if you simply want to delete all values that are no longer used, but do not need to perform any more complex searches and want to keep the run-time of the where-used list to a minimum.

• P one usage per value per InfoProvider:

  The system searches every value in every InfoProvider. Each time a hit is found in an InfoProvider, the search stops in that InfoProvider. This search mode is useful if you are interested in the usage: you can find out which InfoProvider you have to delete from before you can delete them all.

• E one usage is enough:

  After a value is found once, the search stops. This setting is useful if you only want to completely delete the attributes and texts.

• A all usages of all values:

  The system searches every value in every InfoProvider. Every usage is counted. This is a complete where-used list. This search time has the longest runtime. You should only used it if you are interested in all usages.

You can perform the deletion operation in the background.

Choose Start. The program checks the entries in the master data table sequentially in order to see if they are used in other objects. If the master data is used, you can only delete records that are not used, or you can display the where-used list.

Once the deletion is complete, a message appears, and you can display the log. The log displays the where-used list and the list of all deleted records.