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Author's profile photo Andreas Seifried

Archiving and deletion of change requests in SAP Master Data Governance

While the archiving and deletion of change requests is available in SAP Master Data Governance already for a while, I’d like to provide you with an overview on these features, because there were some questions from the community about this recently.

Archiving

The general recommendation is to archive change requests. Archiving removes the change requests from the database and moves them to an external storage. This will reduce the size of the database and improve performance. Important to archiving is that only change requests in a final state can be archived, namely in the statuses Final Check Approved or Final Check Rejected. You can still access archived change request from the application Display Change Requests.

Please use the documentation of archiving object MDG Change Requests (USMD_CR) for further information. You can access this from transaction SARA.

Deletion

If you want to remove change requests completely, you can also delete change requests. This is often the case to clean up things in test or development systems. To ensure audibility, deletion is only allowed in system clients that are not marked as productive. You delete change requests with transaction MDG_DELETE_CREQUEST.

The info button also provides you with more information on the usage.

Availability and further information

Please see SAP Note 2574330 – Archiving and deletion of change requests for information on availability.

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      8 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Hasan Hüseyin Akhuy
      Hasan Hüseyin Akhuy

      Hello Andreas,

      thanks for the nice blog.

      I have one question, how is it when we search for an archived object - when we have activated archiving for Change Request relevant tables and also activate archiving for the change documents? Do we will find any results ? Is this scenario allowed ?

      Expecation is that MDG is looking first for the archived change result and than for the archived/not archived change document.

      Regard,

      Author's profile photo Andreas Seifried
      Andreas Seifried
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Hasan,

      archiving of change request will include archiving of the change documents that are related to the change request. You will find the archived change requests from the Web Dynpro app Display Change Requests. When displaying the actual archived change request, you will not have direct access to the change documents of the change request, but need to use the archive information system (e.g. via SARA).

      Kind regards
      Andreas

      Author's profile photo Anuj Shah
      Anuj Shah

      Hi Andreas,

      Thanks for the above information.

      But, I have another question on similar lines. Below is the quesiton I have posted and its regarding the CR attachments.

      https://answers.sap.com/questions/12915771/options-to-delete-attachments-from-an-approved-or.html#

       

      Regards,

      Anuj

      Author's profile photo Andreas Seifried
      Andreas Seifried
      Blog Post Author

      see my answer there.

      Author's profile photo Yuko Tachibana
      Yuko Tachibana

      Hello Andreas,

       

      Thanks for the blog, very informative.

      I have one question.

      Is there any rough indication on the timing when we should archive change requests?

      For example, once the number of change request (Final Check ApprovedFinal Check Rejected) reaches 100,000 etc.

       

      Best regards,

      Yuko TACHIBANA

      Author's profile photo Andreas Seifried
      Andreas Seifried
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Yuko,

      sorry, to say: this depends... I can't give a definite number. Not being an expert on archiving in general, but I'd say a rule of thumb for archiving of any application data is to archive as early as possible, as this always increases system performance. Of course you have to balance this with your user's requirements for accessing  completed change requests.

      Kind regards
      Andreas

      Author's profile photo Yuko Tachibana
      Yuko Tachibana

      Hello Andreas,

      Thank you so much for your answer and input.

      We should discuss with customers the guide for archiving change requests.

       

      Best regards,

      Yuko TACHIBANA

      Author's profile photo Randy Abate
      Randy Abate

      Hello,

       

      In regards to MDG. I am currently trying to "withdraw" a change request, however the withdraw button is not there. I have done it before but for 3 of these requests the button is disappeared.

      What is the reason for this and how do I get around it?

       

      Thanks in advance