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Process documentationSAP Clearing Guidelines

 

Adhering to the SAP clearing guidelines ensures the following:

  • You minimize the risk of accidentally deleting valid objects.

  • You maximize the ability to recover objects that you may delete accidentally.

The clearing guidelines apply to a 1-1-1 system landscape. This system landscape involves one development system, one quality assurance system, and one productive system.

Process

The initial stage of the clearing process involves deciding whether to delete an object or not. You can use the CDMC application to determine the custom objects that have not been used for a certain time period (obsolete objects).

To identify objects that have not been used for a certain time period:

  • Decide on a date in the past – you can delete the objects that have not been used since this date.

  • For all objects that have been used at some point between the specified date and the current date, the system compares the version of the objects in the three systems. Only consider deleting the objects that have the same version in all three systems.

  • For the objects that have different versions in the different systems, consider each object individually before deciding to delete it. Different versions of an object may indicate that the object is currently in under development or that is has been transported from a remote system outside the normal transport chain.

There may also be objects that do not have a where-used reference. This can mean that the objects are unused in the system, but this is not a reliable indicator for determining that the object is unused. There are objects (for example function modules) that do not use a where-used list.

The next stage involves deciding whether to archive any objects. In this context, archiving means saving the object versions (for example the source code and technical object settings) externally, for example on a compact disc. There are different archiving options, for example:

  • Saving the transport files of the transport request of copies. To do this, create a transport request of copies to which all the objects that you want to delete are assigned. Releasing the transport request of copies creates a transport file with the current active version of the objects. In a next step, you create a workbench transport request that is then used for deleting the objects.

  • Save the active version of each object, before you delete the object. This approach requires a tool that allows you to download the active version of the object to the presentation server so that you can store it on a compact disc.

All archiving tools face one common issue. As the length of time since deleting the object increases, re-importing the object becomes increasingly difficult. This is because related standard SAP objects may be changed, or even deleted, because of a support package implementation or a system upgrade.