Archiving Business Partners
Using archiving you can store business partner data that is no longer required and subsequently delete it physically from the database. In this way the volume of data is reduced and performance improved.
The archiving object for business partners is CA_BUPA.
● You have activated archiving. For more information about the steps required, see Activating the Archiving Functionality.
● In the case of your own data, settings must also be made in the following transactions:
○ Transaction BUS7 for BDT event modules
■ User-defined checks (ARCH1)
■ Write routines for user-defined fields or tables (ARCH3)
■ Delete routines for user-defined fields or tables (ARCH4)
The archiving and deletion of business partner data is performed in the following asynchronous steps:
Business partners can be selected for archiving as follows:
● Directly from business partner maintenance by setting the To Be Archived indicator
● Using a BAPI, method BusinessPartner.Change
● By setting the archiving flag with the transaction BUPA_PRE_DA (Set Deletion or Archiving Flag)
Once a business partner has been flagged for archiving, you are advised not to make any changes to this business partner.
To be archived,
business partners must have an archiving flag for which at least the number of
days defined in Customizing have passed since the check date. The default
period of 30 days is meant to ensure that enough time is available for
carrying out synchronization. This should prevent an order being created on
the CRM Mobile Client in parallel to an archiving procedure on the CRM Server,
which could occur if synchronization has not yet taken place. The period can
be customized with transaction DA_CONTROL (or transaction SARA -> Check/Delete ->
Customizing).
Only those business partners that are no longer used by any application and have no reference to other objects can be archived and subsequently deleted from the database. The status of these business partners is changed by the usage check to Archivable. The usage check is dependent on the selected archiving object. User-defined checks can also be implemented (ARCH1).
When a business
partner is in the process of being archived (and has the system status Archivable), you cannot make any changes to this
business partner. You can only display the business partner.
The business
partner data with the status Archivable is written
to an archive file. There is no status change in the business partner.
The system compares the data in the local archive with the data in the local database. All business partners contained in the specified archive file are selected. Note that a separate comparison program is not available for CRM business partners.
The system then deletes these business partners including the associated dependent data from the database.

These steps can be scheduled as background processes in the Archive Development Kit (transaction SARA).
For more
information about archiving, see
Introduction to Data
Archiving (CA-ARC).