SAP Basis

ADM100 Lesson: Fundamentals of SAP Data Archiving
Figure 59: What is Data Archiving?
This figure clarifies the fact that the data that belongs to particular business
objects can be stored in different database tables. This example shows
selected tables for sales documents: the header data is in table VBAK, the
administration data in VBUK, and the business partner data in VBPA. You
can display the connection between an archiving object and a database
table in transaction DB15.
The archiving object in the figure, SD_VBAK, for sales documents, does
not exist in a pure SAP Web AS system. It is, however, available in an
SAP R/3 Enterprise system.
Since the term “archiving” is used in an undifferentiated way in the IT
world, this section examines a number of other important terms in the data
archiving environment in order to create a distinction between these terms
and data archiving. In particular, data archiving is not
• Reorganization
• Backup / Restore
• Document storage (usually using SAP ArchiveLink)
• Deletion of test data
The term reorganization has a double meaning within the SAP world
(historically, due to SAP R/2). On one hand, this can mean the physical
deletion of application data from the database, on the other - and this is
the actual meaning - this term means the reorganization of the database.
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