SAP FC – Archiving; what technically happens to the consolidation tables
Introduction
You can use the Archiving Tool to store historical consolidated data in archive databases and still access it from the Financial Consolidation application.
This document shows what technically happens at DB level to the tables
Procedure
The consolidations in FC are stored in ct_coXXXX tables. The XXXX indicates a unique identifier and the data for each consolidation definition will be stored in one single table.
You can determine what table holds the data by using this SQL
/* Consolidated */
select p.id, a.name as ‘category’,
ltrim(str(1900+(p.updper&536608768)/262144)) + ‘.’ +
right(’00’+ltrim(str((p.updper&253952)/8192)),2) as ‘period’,
- b.name as ‘scope’,
- c.name as ‘variant’,
- d.name as ‘currency’
from ct_coref p, ct_phase a, ct_scope_code b, ct_variant c, ct_curncy d
where a.id=p.phase and
- p.scope = b.id and
- p.variant=c.id and
- p.curncy = d.id
For example, the consolidation data for {A – 2016.01 – SAP – SAP – USD} is stored in ct_co0050
When you archive (for full documentation, see section “12 Archiving tool” of the “SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Administrator’s Guide”
you first connect to the source database (and also specify the target database, in my example FC_BAK)
You then select the consolidation(s) you want to archive.
In my example, I take the consolidation {A – 2016.01 – SAP – SAP – USD}
When selecting “Execute” the system will show what table will be backed up. Here you can verify that the correct ct_coXXXX table is selected (in this example, it is ct_co0050)
The archiving completes (100%)
What has been done in DB’s
1. In the original DB (FC10) the table has been deleted
2. In the backup database (FC_BAK, in this example), the table has been created
3. In the original DB, there is now a ‘view’ ct_co0050 which is linked to the archived table (i.e. a view to a different DB schema)
The archive tool uses this during the ‘archive’ process
CREATE VIEW dbo.viewname
AS
SELECT column_names
FROM [AnotherServer].[AnotherServerDatabase].dbo.[Table1];
Result
The result is that on the original database, the archiving of the consolidation table is completely transparent
If you run an SQL (e.g. FC report, Cube Designer deployment), the result will still be the same, although the table is physically in a different DB
Vielen Dank
Very helpful! Thank you.
Hey Marc,
Can you also post it on the JAM.
Cheers,
PF
Will do - thanks
Jam L.
Thank you, Marc! This is indeed helpful clarification.
- Rizwan
An excellent post and great explanation. Thank Marc,
My question is, what are the benefits of archiving production database?
Will there be a performance drop when users try to retrieve data?
Hello Mojtaba
The key benefit is that your DB will be smaller, so maintenance tasks like backup, will be a lot faster.
Obviously, there will also be less disk space used (although you still need space for your archive DB)
In my tests, there was no performance issue at all. Selecting data from a view that is connected to another physical DB will depend on the connection between the 2 DBs.
Marc