Manufacturing Order Data Archiving

Requirements of Data Archiving

The main purpose of data archiving is to remove from the database application data that is no longer needed in day-to-day business, with the aim of using resources more efficiently. The following requirements must betaken into account when archiving data:

•Legal requirements: Some kinds of data must be archived so that they can be analyzed at any time in the future, for example data required by the tax authorities. These requirements are subject to the laws of the relevant country. SAP has developed the Data Retention Tool (DART)to enable the US Internal Revenue Service to analyze archived data. The tool includes functions for creating transparent files from archived data and to display this data. 

•Technical requirements: From a technical point of view, the question is whether data can still be read long after it has been archived, independent of the hardware used at the time of archiving and the software release status. To guarantee this, SAP Data Archiving stores, together with the actual application data, additional information about the hardware that was used to write the data to the archive and what type of data structure was applied.

•Business requirements: From the business point of view, only those data objects that are no longer required in day-to-day operations may be removed from the database. Therefore, a logic check must be performed to ensure that only data objects belonging to completed business processes can be archived.The high level of integration between R/3 System applications means that the data objects are closely linked. Consequently, it is essential, during archiving, to check whether the removal of a specific data object from the database requires other objects to be archived at the same time.



SAP Note for Manufacturing Order Archiving