Skip to Content
Technical Articles
Author's profile photo Frank Riesner

SAP BW* TLOGO Versioning in a Nutshell

Dear BW enthusiasts,

did you know there is a useful versioning feature in SAP BW since a long time? Here I would like to provide some key facts to understand, setup and use this feature.

First of all, the default customizing can be found the general customizing of your system (Tr. SPRO). There in the settings for Data Modeling (BW/4HANA) or within the General Settings (NetWeaver BW) you will find the option Create historical TLOGO versions automatically. This function maintains the customizing table RSTLOGOHISTCUST.

The initial customizing consists of only two records. These have following meaning:

  1. Automatic version creation before export and after import for all (*) transportable BW object types (TLOGOs).
  2. Any definition for a specific TLOGO overrules the first (*)-record:
    So for BW Queries (ELEM) this versioning is completely switched off by the second customizing record.

If you would like to create versions also during each activation for some TLOGOs, additional entries are required: In the example above (see “Enhance Versioning for certain TLOGOs”), versioning for object activation has been switched on additionally for ADSOs, InfoObjects, CompositeProviders and Transformations as well.

Attention: It is not recommended to switch the versioning off completely. It is okay to restrict the TLOGOs you would like to enable here, but make sure that versioning is on for InfoObjects (IOBJ). Unless you might run into challenges during changing ADSOs where the versioning is checked to decide whether remodeling is required or not.

In SAP BW 7.x, the versioning concept has been available for a long time in SAP GUI where you model the BW objects. For example, in the maintenance view of InfoCubes, there is the Version Management available from the standard menu.

Since mid of 2017, history versioning is also available in the BW Modeling Tools in a separate view called “History” for both BW 7.5 on HANA and BW/4HANA. There you see the full TLOGO history. Starting from the early 2020 releases, you can compare different versions or revert to older ones for ADSOs, CompositeProviders or InfoObjects in the BW Modeling Tools as well. If the History view is not available by default, you can open it via menu Window/Show View > Other … in the group called Version Control (Team).
Note: Versioning for BW Queries is not available.
Note 2: In BW/4HANA you can still call the classic SAP GUI for versioning with report RSO_TLOGO_HISTORY_UI

 

From administration point of view there are two points to consider:

  1. There is a dedicated authorization object S_RS_HIST to control what each user is allowed to do with the historical versions.
  2. The versions are captured in the backend table RSOTLOGOHISTORY including timestamp, transport ID and User ID. This table can reach significant size depending on how the concept is used. For housekeeping purposes SAP provides report RSDG_DELETE_TLOGO_HISTORY.

 

Related SAP notes

  • 2886009 – CompositeProvider: History version can not be opened in editor (endless loop)
  • 2760770 – Revert (retrieve, restore) historical versions of BW objects
  • 2637109 – Wrong timestamp displayed for active version in history view
  • 2426069 – OutOfMemoryError in BWMT
  • 2416068 – Support for historical versions for BW-MT objects (HCPR, IOBJ, ADSO, etc)
  • 2248171 – RSOTLOGOHISTORY Cleanup Report

Thanks go to Christel for all details provided.

Assigned Tags

      9 Comments
      You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
      Author's profile photo Deniz Osoy
      Deniz Osoy

      Hi Frank,

      thanks for your commitment. I am looking forward to your next blog post.

      Kind regards,
      Deniz

      Author's profile photo Martin Maruskin
      Martin Maruskin

      Hi Frank,

      nice to hear that there is such a Versioning function in BW!
      I understand that in the latest BW systems only objects like ADSOs, InfoObjects, CompositeProviders, Transformations, Reporting elements (ELEM) are supported from compare and/ or revert versions point of view?
      In case of non BW4 based systems are there any plans to support more objects like cubes, MultiProv etc?

      thanks

      Author's profile photo Frank Riesner
      Frank Riesner
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Martin,
      thanks for your input! Versioning has been available for long already and it is available for the classic BW objects as well in case of proper customizing. Here is the official SAP help for BW 7.3 for example: https://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/en/3d/e1b3610f194464b53e10803541e0b1/frameset.htm

      I have also enhanced my blog post above a bit and added one more screenshot.
      Regards - Frank

       

      Author's profile photo Martin Maruskin
      Martin Maruskin

      Thanks Frank, it is clear now. Probably it is not very known feature of BW so your blog helps a lot.

      Author's profile photo jyothi prema
      jyothi prema

      When I try to open version for BW queries it pop up a msg that "object type query does not allow you to open archived version". Does that mean BW queries does not support compare version functionality ?

      Author's profile photo Frank Riesner
      Frank Riesner
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Jyothi,

      where did you try to see the Query Versioning and you received an error message instead ? In the BW Modeling Tools? Can you maybe share a screenshot?

      Thanks - Frank

      Author's profile photo jyothi prema
      jyothi prema

      Hi Frank,

      Thanks for your response.

      Yes I was checking in BW modelling tool. Below is the screenshot for the same.

      Pop%20msg%20when%20I%20try%20to%20open%20query%20A%20versionCompare%20option%20is%20greyed%20out%20for%20query%20version

      Compare option is greyed out for query version

      Pop msg when I try to open query A version

      Author's profile photo Frank Riesner
      Frank Riesner
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you for these details. I tested myself different TLOGOs and their versioning in an up-to-date BW/4HANA system with corresponding BWMT frontend. My finding is that versioning is not implemented for BW Queries, Open Hub Destinations, and Open ODS Views. It works well for the other core objects IOBJ, ADSO, HCPR, TRFN, DTPA, InfoSource or DataFlow,

      I also checked with BW development peers, and they confirmed the same. The interest for versioning of BW Queries seems to be very little, so there are currently no plans to enhance this.

      Regards - Frank

      Author's profile photo jyothi prema
      jyothi prema

      Thank you so much for the confirmation Frank.

       

      Regards,

      Jyothi