Time Restrictions
Use
Using relative and absolute time restrictions reduces the maintenance workload for data archiving. Variants with relative time restriction are designed for periodic scheduling of archiving runs (for example, through a periodic event).
Prerequisites
You have selected a time characteristic under a time slot when in the definition of the archiving object. See also: Archiving Object
Features
Under Relative Time Restrictions, you can specify a selection condition (for the selected time characteristic) that is relative for the data for the execution of the write program.
Only Records Older Than: Here you can determine the upper limit of the time slot. For this you specify a time period relative to the current date. The time unit for the time period can be specified in days, weeks, months, quarters, or years.
Only Complete: The upper limit can be rounded down here by selecting another, additional time unit for the end of a time period. In doing so, you can also archive, for example, only complete months or years when selecting a date field as a selection characteristic for the time slot. The time slot that is defined this way initially contains the complete time period before the upper limit that was calculated in this way. Optionally (when protecting the archived data areas in an ODS object, this option is fixed and set), time slots that were already archived can appear from the selection. In this case, the lower limit of the time slot normally comes from the lower limit of the time slot for the preceding archiving run.
Absolute Time Restrictions: Here you can specify additional selection conditions for the time characteristic. For the actual selection of the archiving run, the intersection of the relative and absolute time restrictions is then taken. In doing so, absolute time restrictions can be used especially with exclusive selection conditions to exclude specific time periods from the selection. If you initially want to leave the time period for relative time restrictions (= all values), then only the absolute time restrictions are valid.
If you have specified a relative time restriction and confirmed it with Enter, the condition is displayed in the bottom row.
For example: You have made the following specifications (in 2002):
Only records older than: |
2 years |
Only complete |
Fiscal years |
Fiscal year |
< 2000 (this is the automatic selection option display) |
This selection has the result that only data is archived from complete fiscal years that is older than two years. From the current time, this would be all records that were loaded prior to 2000.
With Absolute Time Restrictions, the time restriction you selected is displayed. You can specify an absolute time restriction. This is independent of the current time.
For example, you have made the following specifications:
Fiscal year |
1998 to 2000 |
This selection results in data being archived that was loaded between 1998 and 2000, independently of the current date.
If you have specified both relative and absolute time restrictions, the intersection of both is calculated.
For example, you have made the following specifications:
Relative Time Restriction:
Only records older than: |
2 years |
Only complete |
Fiscal years |
Fiscal year |
< 2000 |
Absolute Time Restriction:
Fiscal year |
1998 to 2000 |
This selection means that only data from 1998 and 1999 is archived.