Archiving the Material Master

Archiving the Material Master

Transaction SARA contains all the SAP archiving objects for all the SAP R/3 applications modules.

Archive a Material Master Record

When a material is no longer required in a company or plant, you can archive and delete the material master record. 

You have to Flag the material master record for deletion. This is known as logical deletion. 

Before a material master record can be archived and deleted, other objects (such as purchasing documents) that refer to this material must themselves be archived. You can see which objects these are and the dependencies between them in the network graphic.

If a material master record cannot be archived and deleted at a given organizational level, the reason is given in the log (for example, a purchase order exists for the material). The log also contains technical data such as the number of material master records read and the number deleted.

Some of the archive error log message :-

• Costing data exists
• Use in routing
• Use in sales and distribution
• Use in bill of material
• Delivery exists
• Costing data exists
• Info record exists
• Purchase order exists

Archiving object MM_MATNR for archiving material master records.

You can display the archived data, but not reload it.

To archive the material master, first goto transaction MM71.

Type in a variant name and click Maintain.  (Tick the Test Mode for archive simulation).

Save the variant.

Maintain the Start date and Spool parameters and click execute.

Click Goto Job Overview to check the archive status.
 

To do a permanent delete, goto transaction SARA and click Delete button.

Maintain the Archive Selection, Start date and Spool parameters.

Click Test Session for testing or click execute to start the deletion program.

Click Goto Job Overview to check the delete status.

Now, if you goto MM02/MM03, you will not be able to find the record in the material master.

Meaning of Archiving Residence Time

Residence time 1 is for items without deletion indicator. 

Before the deletion indicator is set for a document item, the system checks whan the relevant item was last changed.  Changes taken into account include a change in the order quantity and a goods receipt, for example.   The date of the last change is compared with the current date.   If no change has taken place within the specified residence time 1, a deletion indicator is set for the item. 

Residence time 2 is for items with deletion indicators.

For document items for which the deletion indicator has been set manually or during the archiving run, the system checks how many days have elapsed since the deletion indicator was set. 

The complete document is not archived until: 

- The deletion indicator has been set for all the items of a document 

- None of the items have been changed within the specified Residence time 2 (i.e. the last change was the setting of the deletion indicator. 

After this, archived documents can be deleted from the database. 

This enables you to set the deletion indicator automatically (residence time 1 = fullfilled) during an archiving run and still keep those records for another time period (residence time 2) in a two step archiving procedure.

How to use "me98" to delete PO from system completely?

If we use "me98"(archive) to delete a PO that have a mistake for vendor code. 
The following step is: 
the 1 step: Maintain and save a variant.  For this variant, we have to create a name for this variant and select the PO which want to delete. it's right? 
the 2 step: "Start Date".  For "Start Date",we select the "immediate " to execute it.  Is it right? 
the 3 step: whether we maintain the "Spool Params" or not?  May we execute it immediately or not? 
Archiving is not deleting. What do you think why SAP developed that much programs to retrieve and read data from an archive. 

Archiving is saving and keeping data for a certain period (based on local laws for data retention and auditing purposes) outside of the production data base.  Such a job is usually done to keep the database small and fast. 

While doing archiving the records are written to a file and verified to be readable and then the original record gets deleted from the database. Only if you delete then the file with the archived data you have deleted the record forever. 

Sometimes people seems to work like a burglar and want erase every single evidence for an error. But even errors, or especially errors are subject to be audited if they are corrected in the right way. This is the same for financial and tax auditiors as for auditors for ISO 9000. 

To be able to archive, you need to setup the path from SAP to the archive. You need to define the size of your archive and how may records should be kept there. 

Step 1: Create variant for Archiving. Give it a name. Enter your PO number. Flag One step procedure. Flag detailed log. Erase flag for test run. 

Step 2: Maintain your start date, you can use Immediate in such a small case. 

Step 3: Maintain spool parameters. Enter your printer and set the values if you want to print immediatly and if you want keep the print. I suggest to hold the spool in the system. This helps you to determine any error. 

Step 4. Execute the variant. 

It creates 4 jobs: 
ARV_MM_EKKO_SUB...., ARV_MM_EKKO_WRI.... ARV_MM_EKKO_DEL..... 
ARV_MM_EKKO_STO.... If one of the steps fails, then everything is rolled back, hence nothing is archived, the record is still in your database. In this case use the jobs spool and joblogs to find out what happend.