Why should I use ASC ?
- Financially: ASC assures your ROI because it establishes the post-project recurrent archiving which is too often stopped for local reasons in each company. As well as the recurrent mode, ASC can be used from the very start of the project because it assures that all the archiving sessions will be launched (initial archiving), liberating employees time for other work. Therefore ASC pays for itself.
- Technology: With the right settings, ASC makes no errors and doesn't forget to do things when they need to be done. ASC doesn't make mistakes, which insures that "uncontrolled" archiving isn't done which would expose your company to financial and regulatory problems. During the archiving project for production systems, ASC allows you to carry out a system refresh while minimizing the workload of the project because it's automatically executed.

How is it installed ?
By SAP Add-On

How long does it take to install ?
Less than one hour. The necessary settings are generally done in less than a day.

Are all archiving objects covered by ASC ?
No, the principle ones (around 40) are covered and TJC adds more according to your company's needs. Customers can also add archiving objects, including their own.

Is there a user manual ?
Yes. The product is delivered with a manual for settings and use which is also available on the website

What's the advantage over an external scheduling tool? 
A lot of our customers use an external scheduler, and your question is a classical one.
To make it simple, you tell a scheduler what to do, he does it, and when something wrong happen (program abend), you get a message and you’re on your own to solve the issue. ASC decides what to do based on customizing, run it, and when something wrong happens, he fix the issue by itself.
Might look an easy answer, so please look at the complete answer on this 15 minutes presentation at http://www.tjc-software.com/demos/ASC_Scheduler/en/ASC_Scheduler_en.ph We only do data archiving. But archiving process is one of the most complex to process. You will not have to change your scheduling when you change your archiving process or when systems volumes and performances change.
The scheduler support team may help you set up some ASC parameters in order to block some fixed or variable days and time slots. The external scheduling tool will start the main ASC job. Then, the external scheduling tool will see all archiving job run by ASC, but do not touch them. We provide a transaction that stop ASC in case of an emergency on your system that may be used by the external scheduling tool. ASC will create variants, run archiving jobs, and will take all necessary actions while respecting parameters such as number of used batchs.
In addition, ASC will help the scheduler because he will use more intensively available batch processes, so archiving is always up to date, and others jobs run more easily.

Can ASC be guided by an external scheduler ?
Yes. ASC can be launched by a scheduling tool. All the archiving session jobs are managed by ASC, but can they be intercepted by a scheduler for information purposes.

What is the expected life span of ASC ?
ASC is developed in ABAP; the programs are delivered as open source. It was first delivered in 2005 and is available for all SAP versions from 4.0 onwards (see availability table).
The ASC Add-On has guaranteed maintenance for 3 years which can be extended on a per customer basis.

The connections between the archiving objects are taken into account by ASC ?
The connections are managed via the settings of ASC. A link like "Object A after Object B" guarantees that the archiving of object A for a given month will only start if the archiving session of object B is done for the same month. The links between objects are only taken into account if the objects are themselves managed by ASC. The user can add all the connections which appear necessary.

Can I make parallel archiving sessions for the same object ?
Yes, on the condition that the values used to select the data do not overlap. ASC verifies this before launching a new archiving session.

What does ASC do if there is a system stop ?
Depending on the settings, it can restart and complete the archiving session.

What does ASC do during an interruption of an archiving job ?
It restarts the interrupted job. The number of relaunches can be set.

Can the number of jobs launched by ASC be limited ?
Yes, the settings define the number of archiving sessions and the jobs which can be active at the same time.

Does ASC know how to manage the impact of archiving on the performance of the system ?
Yes. The number of active simultaneous jobs can be set according to the modes of usage. The number of suppression jobs (which impact performance the most) can be limited in quantity according to the hours of system use. ASC also manages the dates on which the archiving may not take place (for example during fiscal year-end periods).

How can I manage a backup process for archive files in an automated mode?
ASC can make a copy on a disk of the ADK files before these are deleted by a suppression job.

The archiving of certain objects can require a specific treatment in order to make them archivable. Can such a process be taken into account ?
In standard mode, ASC allows the management of a user pretreatment (complementary to the SAP pretreatment). The definition of the necessary variable for this treatment is done by a user-exit.

Does ASC allow progressive archiving ?
In the full archiving mode, ASC systematically treats all the archiving objects for which it has a setting. It can also treat, for example, one single object, or all the objects related to a single country.
The prerequisite is that the treated archiving objects can themselves allow this split. This function is available on all versions from 4.0 onwards.

Can I manage the archiving by organization entity (company, division, sales organization, etc.) with ASC ?
Yes. To do this, you use the so-called archiving range which allows a break down of the archiving by company or by country, in using different lengths of existence. The prerequisite is that the treated archiving objects can themselves allow this decomposition. This function is available on all versions from 4.0 onwards.

What kind of reporting, statistics or status information does the product provide?
First, please keep in mind that, after some time, you will probably check data archiving only once a quarter.
Each ASC session produces a feed back with information on each session step. For business archiving object, you get in addition the percentage of archived objects (number of archived objects / number of object selected with the variant). Detailed information about each archiving session (job list, run time, duration, status, and so on) are stored in an historical table.

Seems like the early part of the presentation and demo focused a lot on using org structure elements in the archiving objects and variants.  We currently don't use org structure elements in our variants.  Will the product still be as useful for us?
Well, some companies use ArchiveLink, some don’t. Same for PBS add-ons, for external scheduler: what is important is that ASC covers it all.
First org structures are not only used for company codes.
Using archive area to split archiving by organization or document type is not mandatory. Although it is commonly used because archiving rules may be different for a same object: as examples, archiving inbound IDOCS after 6 months and outbound IDOCS after 3 months (look at details at : http://www.tjc-software.com/demos/ASC_Customizing_IDOC/ASC_Customizing_IDOC.php ) , or archiving CO_ITEM for CTR after 12 months but after only 3 months for REO. All this is done using areas.
Even if you run archiving session without area, you need to run and manage x archiving session every month. Using ASC, you are confident all archiving session that should be run during the month will really be performed. ASC takes into account all late archiving session (in case you had to stop archiving during an upgrade, because of holidays, …)
Preparing and following on archiving requires resources, so some companies only archive once or twice a year. Automation allows to run archiving on a regular basis, and to really keep volume growth under control.
Then, even if you do not use org structures in your archiving variant today, maybe with ASC you will use them to create archive files with more sorted data (if you open less archive files, it goes faster).
ASC controls are based on archiving object, archiving area, archiving option, but it still works if you don’t use archiving area.
You might want to look at an SD example at
http://www.tjc-software.com/demos/ASC_SD_customizing/ASC_SD_customizing.php

What kind of productivity claims can be made about the product?
ASC logic is not using CPU by itself. Most run time is due to archiving job and PBS jobs. Imagine a person, working 24h a day, 365 days a year, acting real fast. A dedicated archiving expert: it’s the productivity claim you get.

Other topics are: - You may improve archiving process (you no longer care about complexity) - No need to think about initial archiving when setting up a new archiving object - No errors (like archiving too early, or missing a month) - No reason to stop archiving, even when your team is overbooked - Perfect archiving notes documentation - Auditor’s loves automates: they are sure what’s in archive files, and what’s not in it. We pinpointed archiving challenges and points were ASC might be interesting at : http://www.tjc-software.com/demos/ASC_Archiving_Challenge/ASC_Archiving_Challenge.php