Author Archives: Paul Caravella

How to include CertoStore archived data in your ECC reports

SAP has recently moved away from being able to recover archived data in ECC. The reason for this is that the character of live database data is different to the static archived data. This translates into potential inconsistencies if both are combined again into the live database.

SAP has however enabled more standard SAP reports to run on a user defined Data Source.

Quite a number of standards SAP reports now offer the Data Sources option button, which allows the user to run the report on the Database or the CertoStore Archive or both. In case of Archive selection, there is an option to let the Archive Information System choose the archived data or to select archived files manually.

This effectively enables any user to read from the live Database as well as from the CertoStore Archived data files or both.

How to recover from CertoStore archived data in BW

In BW, you can recover a load from the CertoStore Archive using transaction SARA.

There is also another option. You can set your DTP settings to load data from the CertoStore Archive.  This makes it a much more care-free and less maintenance-heavy way to recover data.

Here is an extract of the SAP documentation on this setting:

For a full DTP, these settings apply to all requests started by the DTP. For a delta DTP, the settings only apply to the first request (delta initialization)

For Extraction from the DataStore Object, you have the following options:

• Active Table (with Archive)
  The data is read from the active table and from the archive or from a near-line storage if one exists. You can choose this option even if there is no active data archiving process yet for the DataStore object.

• Active Table (Without Archive)
  The data is only read from the active table. If there is data in the archive or in a near-line storage at the time of extraction, this data is not extracted.

• Archive (Only Full Extraction)
  The data is only read from the archive or from a near-line storage. Data is not extracted from the active table.

• Change Log
  The data is read from the change log of the DataStore object.

For Extraction from the InfoCube, you have the following options:

• InfoCube Tables
  Data is only extracted from the database (E table and F table and aggregates).

• Archive (Only Full Extraction)
  The data is only read from the archive or from a near-line storage.

For Immediate Release

CertoStore Achieves Certified Integration with SAP NetWeaver®

CARDIFF – 19 February, 2014 – Object Matrix today announced its CertoStore nearline archive solution has achieved certified integration with the SAP NetWeaver ® technology platform. The solution has been proven to integrate with SAP NetWeaver, and provides secure offline storage and nearline storage for archived files from the SAP ® ERP application.

The SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC) has certified that the CertoStore on Matrixstore solution version 3.0 integrates with SAP NetWeaver. CertoStore protects content onto MatrixStore, the acclaimed object based storage solution from Object Matrix. CertoStore enables users to archive data from their SAP ERP-based systems onto the trusted and proven disk-based archiving platform MatrixStore that is used by leading companies from the FTSE 100, banking and broadcast sectors the world over.

“We are delighted to announce the successful achievement of SAP certification for our CertoStore on MatrixStore 3.0 solution,” said Jonathan Morgan, CEO of Object Matrix. “The ability of CertoStore to leverage the business potential of assets provided by solutions from SAP and other vendors will prove highly beneficial to current and future customer engagements.”

About Object Matrix

Object Matrix Ltd is a UK company formed in 2003. The company provides data storage solutions to major broadcasters, banks and FTSE 100 companies to securely store and provide fast access to petabytes of data.

# # #

SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several

other countries.

All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

For more information, please contact:

Paul Caravella

Executive Summary

As your BW data grows in size, maintaining system performance and response times will prove costly and challenging if you want to keep all this data online.

On the other hand, users still want to access historical data.

As part of their Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) for SAP BW, many customers choose to keep data online going back a number of years. Data created prior to that can be kept Near Line or Offline so it can still be easily accessed by the users if needed.

As of SAP BW 7.01, you can use the CertoStore Storage System to offload your historical BW data as part of your Data Retention Strategy.

Overview of the functionality

You can set up a Data Archiving Process for Cubes as well as for DataStore Objects.

In the Selection Profile tab, you select your Characteristic for Time Slice.

Once the Data Archiving Process is set up, a new Archiving tab becomes available in the InfoProvider Administration menu (right click – manage).

Your relevant Cube data will need to be compressed before it can be archived. This is standard SAP BW functionality which can be managed under the Collapse tab.
SAP has built in a Process Flow Control with various stages which need to be confirmed either manually or as part of a Schedule.

A successfully processed Archiving Request will set a lock on the Characteristic Value for the Time Slice set in the previous step. This will prevent any new data being loaded against the already Archived data in the same Time Slice.
Once the data is ‘Archived’ on CertoStore, it can still be accessed by BW Queries as long as you set the ‘Read Near-Line Storage As Well’ flag in transaction RSRT properties for the relevant Queries.

Effectively the ‘Near-Line’ data is stored in a file on the CertoStore Server.

The Offline version is securely stored on the MatrixStore Nodes and can be retrieved again at any time if and when needed via the Archiving Object Management Tab.

Performance tests have shown that the BW Query response time (with Cache set to Inactive) is almost instantaneous for highly Aggregated Archived BW data.

A test with 7 million Archived line items (no-aggregation) returned the query data in a couple of minutes. This is the response time we can expect for this kind of volume.
Restoring the Archived data from the CertoStore Storage System and reloading it in the original Data Target requires a few extra steps and works perfectly.

Conclusion
CertoStore enables the full BW Information Lifecycle Management Spectrum including Near Line Storage using ADK. This will work on any database, including SAP HANA. Using CertoStore will reduce your Total Cost of Ownership and will increase overall system performance without losing access to your data.

Compliance requirements set by external government agencies are on the rise globally. Regulators are now focusing on more factors than simple data retention, they want to see evidence of data authenticity, protection and availability, audit trails and security enforcement. The onus is on the whole organisation to ensure that the processes are in place and are followed but the real scrutiny comes when data needs to be presented at a given time with proof of its authenticity. That is when technology becomes an essential part of the workflow.

Governance, authenticity and an audit trail is required throughout the lifetime of the content from creation to archive. Generally, the requirements placed upon the technology pieces come down to retention and authenticity of data, access control and availability. British standards such as BSI BIP 0008 have been put in place to ensure the long term (6 years) authenticity and availability of digital records.

MatrixStore provides all the functionality required to protect legal, financial, defense and video data in accordance with global regulations. It does this with very little management or administrative effort allowing employees to carry out tasks that will add value to the organisation. The table below gives the MatrixStore approach to tackling those requirements.