You can activate and deactivate logging for texts that you enter in certain applications in the form of comments or explanations. Like changes in tables, every change to these long texts is written to a logging table. By using evaluation functions, you can search for the logged long texts using criteria you entered yourself.

The system profile parameter rec/client must be active for every client in which you want to log the long text tables STXL and STXH (see below).

Table logging must be active for the tables STXH and STXL.

When a SAP System is customized, the user has the option of enhancing data for certain applications be entering additional comments or explanations, known as long texts. The system stores these long texts, with various attributes such as object value and ID, in the tables STXL (actual text) and STXH (header data).

If table logging is activated for tables STXL and STXH, each time a change is made to a long text, the old long text is entered in the logging table DBTABLOG. The dataset in this table therefore rapidly increases. To prevent this, only long texts relevant to logging (for example, for working in a controlled environment in the pharmaceuticals industry, GxP) and their history should be saved.

When table logging is active for STXL and STXH, the system writes all changed long texts to DBTABLOG. To delete unwanted long text logs from the table, or to reinsert them where required, you can select and deselect a deletion flag in transaction AUT04 (all long text objects in the system are listed in this transaction).

Report AUT_DEL, which can be run as a background job, looks through the list in transaction AUT04 to determine whether the deletion flag is selected for a long text object, and removes these long text logs from table DBTABLOG. If the deletion flag is deselected at a later date, from this point in time the system stores all subsequent changes to the long text of this data object in table DBTABLOG.

When you start transaction AUT05, the deletion report AUT_DEL does not run as a background job but is started immediately.