Archiving the data in SAP BI

Archiving is used to store your data at a remote location to improve the performance in BI.

Archiving is a process of moving the data from the sap database to storage system which is not required online and archived data can be read offline when ever user required. 

Archiving helps to increase more database size, improvement of the system performance will take care to a greater extant and cost effectiveness for the client with respect to hardware. 

We use archiving process in various SAP application areas. We can archive Master data and Transactional datas. 

Master data such as Customer master data, Vendor master data, Material master data, Batch master data and so on... 

Transaction data such as Sales order, Delivery document, shipment document, Billing document, Purchase requisition, Purchase order, Production Order, Transfer order, Account receivables, Account payables, and so on

Steps should be followed for Archiving in 7.0:

1. Go to transaction -: RSDAP

2. Give info provider name & type- create.

3: Go to General Settings - Give archiving object name.

4. Selection Profile tab- schedule time.

5. ADH (tab)- Specify logical file name.

6. Activate - make sure you copy your archiving object name.

7. go to t-code : SARA give your object name.& click "write request"

8. now create a variable & click on variable & click on MAINTAIN.

9. select a field Then- CONTINUE

10. go to "FURTHER RESTRICTION(tab)"give a value

11. go to to processing options: click on production mode.

12. save 

13. Attribute (tab): give a name & save

14. give start date & print parameters. 

15. Execute.

Usage of compound attribute in reporting

Compounding attribute lets you derive a unique data records in the reporting. 

Suppose you have a cost center and cost accounts like this and you want to maintain proper relation:

Cost centers: 1000, 1001, 1002

Cost accounts: 9001,9001,9003

The cost accounts are not unique across cost centers and the master data will be over written.

So the cost accounts across cost centers cannot be differentiated. 

When you add the cost centers ac compounding attribute a unique record will be present. After compounding the records will look unique like below in reporting:

9001/1000

9002/1000

9003/1000

9001/1001

9002/1001

9003/1001

9001/1002

9002/1002

9003/1002

Thus differentiating each cost account across cost centers uniquely.

Compounding objects and its purpose

A compound attribute differentiates a characteristic to make the characteristic uniquely identifiable. 

In the Compounding tab page, you determine whether you want to compound the characteristic to other InfoObjects. You sometimes need to compound InfoObjects in order to map the data model. Some InfoObjects cannot be defined uniquely without compounding. 

For example, if storage location A for plant B is not the same as storage location A for plant C, you can only evaluate the characteristic Storage Location in connection with Plant. In this case, compound characteristic Storage Location to Plant, so that the characteristic is unique. One particular option with compounding is the possibility of compounding characteristics to the source system ID. You can do this by setting the Master data is valid locally for the source system indicator. You may need to do this if there are identical characteristic values for the same characteristic in different source systems, but these values indicate different objects. 

Recommendation : Using compounded InfoObjects extensively, particularly if you include a lot of InfoObjects in compounding, can influence performance. Do not try to display hierarchical links through compounding. Use hierarchies instead. 

Note : A maximum of 13 characteristics can be compounded for an InfoObject. Note that characteristic values can also have a maximum of 60 characters. This includes the concatenated value, meaning the total length of the characteristic in compounding plus the length of the characteristic itself. Reference InfoObjects If an InfoObject has a reference InfoObject, it has its technical properties:

· For characteristics these are the data type and length as well as the master data (attributes, texts and hierarchies). The characteristic itself also has the operational semantics. 

· For key figures these are the key figure type, data type and the definition of the currency and unit of measure. The referencing key figure can have another aggregation. 

These properties can only be maintained with the reference InfoObject. Several InfoObjects can use the same reference InfoObject. InfoObjects of this type automatically have the same technical properties and master data. The operational semantics, that is the properties such as description, display, text selection, relevance to authorization, person responsible, constant, and attribute exclusively, are also maintained with characteristics that are based on one reference characteristic. 

Example : The characteristic Sold-to Party is based on the reference characteristic Customer and, therefore, has the same values, attributes, and texts. More than one characteristic can have the same reference characteristic: The characteristics Sending Cost Center and Receiving Cost Center both have the reference characteristic Cost Center. Assign Points if useful 

Example : Typically in a organization the employee id are allocated in serial like say 101, 102 and so on. Lets your Organization comes out with a new employee id scheme where the employee id for each location would start with 101. So the employee id starting for India would be India 101 and for UK would be UK/101. Now note that the employee India 101 and US/101 are different. Now if someone has to contact employee 101 he needs to know the location without which he cannot uniquely identify the employee. Hence in this case location is the compounding attribute.

Importance of semantic groups in DTP

Semantic Groups to specify how you want to build the data packages that are read from the source (DataSource or InfoProvider). To do this, define key fields. Data records that have the same key are combined in a single data package. 

This setting is only relevant for Data Store objects with data fields that are overwritten. This setting also defines the key fields for the error stack. By defining the key for the error stack, you ensure that the data can be updated in the target in the correct order once the incorrect data records have been corrected.

A very simple example:

Lets say there are two records in the input stream of data for a DTP.

Product   Material 

P1           M1 XYZ 

P1           M1 PQR 

If the data gets divided into multiple packets while getting processed, the above two records might go into separate data packets. In case you have defined semantic group in DTP with product and material, system will always put these two records together. This is sometimes required when it is needed to process all such records together, for eg., in start routine.

Semantic Groups are to specify how you want to build the data packages that are read from the source. To do this, you determine key fields. Data records that have the same key are combined in one data package. Currently, only data that has been read from the PSA can be processed further in semantic groups.

This setting also determines the key fields for the error stack. 

In bw3.x infopackage directly transfers the data to targets but in BI 7 infopackage will only bring data to PSA, Data Transformation Processing will transfer the data from PSA tothe target. PSA is only staging area this will not be a target (we can’t do anything here)

Difference between DTP and IP in BI 7.0

The key difference between 3.5 and 7.0 is that in 3.5 an infopackage would load from a single DS to multiple data targets (infocubes, ODS etc) so if the source was sending delta, then the load to targets has to be done as a single data load to all,meaning a delta has to get loaded to all targets at the same time. you could not load them at different timings.

Whereas in 7.0, DTP helps in maintaining delta queues from PSA to different targets enabling you to load the delta to each target, independent of the other because each target will have its own delta Queue maintained. This is a big change in 7.0 and helps in load distribution mechanisms.