Using exceptional updates in SAP BW/4HANA (straggler management)

Dear  SAP BW/4HANA lovers ,

I have been part of SAP for close to 10 years and work mainly on SAP BW/4HANA topics. There were many enquiries about exceptional update feature  in SAP BW/4HANA  especially on enabling the feature for ADSO and allowing stragglers in the past.

So, I would  like to give a summery of implementing the feature here.

After successful release of  SAP BW/4HANA 2021 ,we have new features which provides more flexibility with exceptional updates for cold data especially for standard ADSO without changelog and Data mart DSO(Cube like ) in  SAP BW/4HANA.

This blog describes how to work with exceptional updates ( stragglers) in SAP BW/4HANA  by giving the possibility to handle data belonging into the cold store by loading them into a separate “cold” activation queue and activating them directly into the cold partition in ADSO .

To begin with  we should  move some partitions in the ADSO to cold store using Data Tiering Optimization.

(Please find more information here: DTO overview )

Step 1 : Creating ADSO of type (CUBE/DATA MART)

ADSO(Cube Like) with exceptional update

Data activation in exceptional update ADSO

If data is loaded into the inbound table (AQ) of a exceptional update -ADSO, then records belonging into the cold store (at the time of loading) do not lead to errors (archive violations) but are redirected into a second inbound table (AX). As a result, data of the same load request will be spread over two different inbound queues. These two parts of the load request can then be activated independently with the restriction that the hot part must always be activated first.

Step 2: Move the data in ADSO partitions (static/dynamic partitions :ADSO partitioning in SAP BW/4HANA) to cold store  using data tiering optimization .

ADSO partitioning

Step 3: Choose the manage  data tiering  tile after launching  SAP BW/4HANA  Web Cockpit (Find the configuration information here)

Launching data tiering tile from SAP BW4HANA Web cockpit

Step 4: Move some ADSO partitions to cold store, say 2012 to 2019 data .( How to move partitions to cold using DTO)

Partitions moved to cold store using data tiering optimization

Step 5:  As in when there are more records come in the archive range (cold store data 2012 to 2019 calyear range) this feature provides the ability to  process  updates, inserts and  deletes to cold store using a separate cold activation process for inbound table (cold) after a hot activation in the inbound table.

Navigate to Manage data store tile  to see that the newer requests with exceptional updates have records in both inbound table as well as inbound table (cold)

ADSO Manage with both hot and cold activation requests

Step 6:  Observe the changes in the data tiering page as the cold activated requests are updated directly to cold store ,Number of rows (DTO relevant table) would give the newly added records to cold store through exceptional update.

Data tiering information with DTO relevant table data

As mentioned above, the hot and the cold part of a load request can be activated independently (with the restriction that the hot part must always be activated first). The hot activation does the appropriate changes to the active table and logs these changes in the change log. The cold activation does the appropriate changes directly in the archive and logs these changes in the changelog.

In standard ADSOs, several load requests can be activated (condensed) into one activation request. This is also possible for the hot activation in an exceptional update ADSO. In such a case, the following cold activation must condense exactly the same load requests into one cold activation request.

Please not that the feature is only available when we use SAP IQ as cold store. Also exceptional update cannot be switched off if the inbound (cold) contains data.

The feature was first introduced for  standard ADSO from SAP BW/4HANA 2.0 SP7 and later on extended to other ADSO flavors .

Conclusion

Exceptional update feature allows  users to  update archive records of  ADSO in the  cold store  directly which was not possible  earlier in ADSO because of archive violations error in DTP. Now with exceptional update feature it is possible to write back to cold store in ADSO with the help of separate cold activation request . This feature is only supported in SAP BW/4HANA

Thank you for reading and please provide your valuable feedback.

Happy to help 🙂

Please follow  SAP BW/4HANA  community to get to know the latest capabilities in BW/4HANA.

Thanks & Regards,

Priya