Data that has been archived using SAP Data Archiving has only been removed from the database, and not from the application component. Data is still available for read access and analysis. In some cases, archived data can even be reloaded into the database.

A prerequisite of read access and reload access, is that the file can be found in the file system. You can check this in archive administration.

Three types of access are possible:

• Read access to a single data object (such as a posting document)
  Direct access requires an index that can be constructed either during or after archiving . A complex search of the documents stored in the archive files, in which all orders of an article in a particular batch are required for a product recall action, is not possible.

• Analysis of the archive file (sequential read)
  The analysis can be of one or more archiving sessions. You can also link current data in the database and archived data.

• Reload to the database
  Archived data does not usually need to be reloaded because it remains accessible by the applications. There is also a lot of data that cannot be reloaded or for which reloading is inappropriate. For this reason, reload programs do not exist for all archiving objects.