Residence Time / Retention Period 

The term residence time is used to refer to the period of time set in Customizing that must elapse before the system can archive the application data of an archiving object. When this time elapses, the application data is selected by an analysis process and checked to see whether it can be archived from a business point of view.

The basis used to calculate the residence time may differ, depending on the application (for example, the entry date, posting date or goods issue date). You can set the reference time for each archiving object to days, weeks, months or years in the application object-specific Customizing settings.

If you choose Month as the reference period, the system uses 31 days as a basis for each month. The system bases the Year period on 365 days.

 

The entry date is used as the basis for calculating the residence time and a residence time of three months is set. During the next archiving run, the system selects all the data entered at least three months ago (in other words, 3 times 31 days) for another check. If this data is considered archivable from a business point of view, it is archived. The system does not archive data entered less than 3 months ago. This remains in the database.

 

The term retention period is used to refer to the complete period of time for which the data actually remains in the database, from the time it is entered to the time it is archived. The retention period can be longer than the residence time and cannot be set in Customizing. It may be longer than the residence time if, for example, the data that the system would be able to archive on the basis of the residence time criterion does not meet other application object-specific archiving prerequisites. The system would therefore exclude this data from the archiving process.