A Glance at Archiving MM_MATBEL

[jimmy_zhang1]

As SAP note 577847 mentioned:

"Recently, data archiving has played an increasingly important role in the efficient operation of SAP systems with large datasets.The basic functionality for data archiving was provided by means of transports up to Release 3.1 and continuously developed in subsequent releases. Further improvements can be made to the uniformity of archiving solutions for different archiving objects.Access to archived data can be harmonized across different applications types and in some cases, may even be extended."

Thus "The archiving objects used most frequently by customers were revised as part of a project in R/3 Enterprise." was introduced by this note. At the end of this note, you will find a long list of related SAP notes about accordancy changes on archiving in respective application areas. Among those related notes, what we MM-IM care about is the note:

591198    Archiving MM_MATBEL: Normalization

The above note explains the difference between old and new. For example the archiving and writing program were changed. Besides, more importantly, archive info structure SAP_DRB_MATBEL1 was newly introduced. The structure of archive index MKPF_ARIX and the material short document MARI which we are familar are no longer permitted.

Let's have a look at the different GUI:

transaction code SARA => button "Customizing" => Archiving Object-Specific Customizing: Technical Settings

Before the activation of archive info structure SAP_MATBEL_MARI, the logic of MM_MATBEL is:

1>Customizing: SARA=>customizing=>Archiving Object-Specific Customizing Technical Settings=>build index is ticked
2>When the archiving session is completed, in management button, we can see all the sessions there.
3>Check one individual session:
Session header is in table ADMI_RUN.
Archive file in in table ADMI_FILES: can see the file key number, Physical File name....
Index status is green: index created.
4>The logic of MB51 when using "short document" (not using information system) then is:
read MARI for displaying the short document, and through the material document number to read MKPF_ARIDX to find the archive file, then use the archive file name to achieve the archived data.

Subsequently, to display the archived document in MB51 by using the archive info structure, note 599966 changed the transaction MB51. We can see slight difference in MB51 screen:

By using the archive info structure, we can omit updating the archive index MARI, and the required space in the database is significantly dropped. As the note 599966 decribed we can subsequently set up archive info structure SAP_MATBEL_MARI for existing archive files. Then corresponding entries in tables MARI and MKPF_ARIX for these files can be deleted by report RM07MAID.

RM07MAID will delete MKPF_ARIDX and MARI simultaneously.The logic of the RM07MAID is :

• Step 1. Check all the archiving sessions (table ADMI_RUN), find out the respective archive file (table ADMI_FILES) for each session. The combination of table ADMI_RUN & ADMI_FILES is field DOCUMENT Archiving Session Number.
• Step 2. Through the archive files, find out the entries in MKPF_ARIDX,  the selection field is ARKEY (Key for Archive File).
• Step 3. Those MKPF entries in MKPF_ARIDX will be used to read the corresponding MARI entries. Then delete those MARI entries.
• Step 4. Then delete those MKPF_ARIDX entries after deletion of MARI entries.
• Step 5. Update the index status of the archiving session. Then the index status displayed in SARA for the session is yellow (index deleted).

It is recommend to delete MKPF_ARIDX and MARI by using RM07MAID. I met some cases that MKPF_ARIDX entries are deleted some custom report but MARI entries stay in system. Then typical problem is that there is always error message while using MB51.

Last but not least, let's have a look at the transaction SARI which manage the archive info structure:

SARI=>Archive Explorer=>Archiving object MM_MATBEL; Archive info structure SAP_DRB_MATBEL1 

double clicking one of the entry=>choose technical view

we can get the archive file key 

With the archive file key, we can go back to transaction SARA, click management button, and find out the archive session and get all the relevant information when doing the archiving.