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.

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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.

archived 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.