SAP data archiving is the solution to reduce, and then stabilize SAP databases sizes while maintaining good systems performances. In order to keep data archiving project benefit’s, on-going data archiving need to be performed on a regular basis. Performing data archiving requires long, cumbersome, and complex actions to be performed by SAP system teams such as defining variants, release and follow-up jobs, and managing incidents.

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Main Features:

Automatic restart of interrupted sessions. This feature gives you permanent control over archiving sessions in progress.

Grouping organizational entities within your archiving partitions.
You can define as many archiving scopes as desired (by company, country, etc.) so that the data can be archived separately, with application of different archiving rules.

Processing delayed archiving sessions. When you install ASC, delayed archiving sessions can be processed separately or batched within a same session.

Sessions can be paused.
When archiving windows are used, you can force a session to pause. This session can then be continued later.

Limiting session length. You can set the maximum length of time for a session. When the session time you set expires, ASC will stop scheduling archiving sessions.

Managing archiving windows. For each archiving object or archiving partition, you can schedule fixed or variable days when archiving will not take place.

Depth of archiving. In addition to the retention period concept, you can add archiving depth, which can substantially reduce processing time.

Limiting the number of background processes kept busy by archiving processes. You can limit the number of concurrent processes per archiving session. The number of concurrent delete jobs can also be configured.

Processes required for an archiving session

At a minimum, an archiving session includes a write phase and a delete phase. Depending on the nature of the archiving objects processed, the architecture, retrieval requirements and user-specific considerations, the following is also available:
- Pre- and/or post-processing specific to the archiving object.
- Storage of ADK files on a Content Server.
- Additional user-defined pre- and/or post-processes.

If using PBS® retrieval modules, you should launch index file creation and activation processes.

When ADK archive files are no longer necessary, you should purge the archive data structures that use them and, if necessary, remove them from the PBS® indexes.

The list of processes to be launched can vary substantially depending on the source of the data to be archived, especially if the environment supports multiple businesses or a multinational corporation.

For example, for a SD-VBRK (invoice) archiving object:
- Business X’s invoices are archived 6 months after creation and must be accessible via PBS® for a period of 5 years.
- Business Y’s invoices are archived 12 months after creation and must be accessible via an archive information system for a period of 8 years. After archiving, a special process is launched to update specific tables.

Scheduling Archiving Sessions

An archiving session can impact the SAP system in two ways: significant consumption of system resources and, in the case of reporting, momentary data loss. For each archiving object, three windows should be defined to accommodate business time zones as well as certain periods on the calendar reserved by your organization.

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Operating Principle

For each archiving object, ASC establishes the list of processes to be executed and creates the variants required for each program.

ASC creates, manages and, if necessary, restarts the all session processes.

When preparing jobs, ASC checks whether the archiving windows defined in the configuration permit launch. It also controls the number of active jobs to avoid potential system freeze.

Using ASC

ASC always runs in the background. It can be scheduled through R/3 or using any kind of third-party scheduling tool. The different options allow you to identify the archiving objects or archiving partitions to be processed during the session.

ASC terminates when the last archiving session ends.

At the end of the process, a report is generated that includes the list of archiving sessions executed and the status of all processes launched.