SAP White Paper

InformationLifecycleManagement in anSAP Environment

Version 3.0February 2008

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This white paper outlines our general product direction andshould not be relied on in making a purchase decision. Thiswhite paper is not subject to your license agreement or anyother agreement with SAP. SAP has no obligation to pursueany course of business outlined in this white paper or todevelop or release any functionality mentioned in this whitepaper. This white paper and SAP's strategy and possiblefuture developments are subject to change and may bechanged by SAP at any time for any reason without notice.This document is provided without a warranty of any kind,either express or implied, including but not limited to, theimplied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particularpurpose, or non-infringement. SAP assumes noresponsibility for errors or omissions in this document,except if such damages were caused by SAP intentionallyor grossly negligent.

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CONTENTSDISCLAIMER..................................................................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................4

BACKGROUND TO ILM................................................................................................................4

WHY ILM?.....................................................................................................................................5ILM IN PRACTICE ...........................................................................................................................6THE LIFE CYCLE OF DATA ..............................................................................................................7

SAP’S STANDARD TOOLS AND FUNCTIONS TO SUPPORT YOUR ILM STRATEGY ........7

MAIN CONCEPTS AND TECHNOLOGIES IN DATA ARCHIVING AT SAP ................................................8ADDITIONAL STANDARD FUNCTIONS AND CONCEPTS TO SUPPORT ILM..........................................13

ILM SOLUTION FROM SAP .......................................................................................................18

NON-DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION AND OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE .........................................................18MAIN CONCEPTS, PROCESSES, AND TECHNOLOGIES IN RETENTION MANAGEMENT..........................18MAIN CONCEPTS AND TECHNOLOGIES IN RETENTION WAREHOUSE ................................................23ILM FROM SAP VS. ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT (ECM).................................................26AVAILABILITY ..............................................................................................................................26

CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK.................................................................................................26

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ..........................................................................................................27

GLOSSARY....................................................................................................................................28

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IntroductionInformation Lifecycle Management (ILM) from SAP is builtupon three main cornerstones. The first is dataarchiving/data management. The second cornerstone isretention management, which is composed of a range ofnew functions such as retention policy management andlegal hold, to help you adequately control the retention ofyour data along its entire life cycle. The third cornerstone isthe retention warehouse, a standardized solution fordecommissioning legacy systems and methods for tax andother type of reporting on the data from thedecommissioned system. Version 3.0 of this white paperpresents a close-up view of the three cornerstones of thenew ILM solution from SAP. The new functions of the twonew cornerstones are a major step towards moreautomation and completeness in ILM, addressing retentionmanagement and end-of-life data in a legal compliancesetting, as well as retention management and legalcompliance issues during system decommissioning. Thenew functions of the solution all build upon tried and testedfunctions that customers have been using for years and cantherefore be called “non-disruptive innovation”. They werepartly designed in conjunction with an ILM Influence Councilat the Americas’ SAP User Group (ASUG). Through thisclose cooperation with our customers, SAP was able toobtain specific feedback on the pain points companies arefacing in their ILM and legal compliance strategies. As aresult, development of the new retention management andretention warehouse functions has been directly aimed atsolving these pain points and has been developed with aspecial focus of enhancing or building on existingcapabilities.

ILM from SAP is currently being rolled out, and a firstversion is scheduled to be released to ramp-up customersmid 2008. Further developments and enhancements to theILM solution from SAP will be released in the future.

Note!Some of the concepts and functions described in this white paperare not yet part of the first version of ILM from SAP scheduled forramp-up mid 2008. Some concepts and functions will be developedin the second version of ILM from SAP or other future versions.

Background to ILMOver the last few years information lifecycle managementhas gone from being a mere buzzword to representing asolid strategy and concept with a clear definition that mostagree upon. While at the beginning, ILM was strongly drivenby the storage industry and often used as a synonym fortiered storage solutions, Hierarchical Storage Management(HSM), or other storage-related concepts, most haverecognized that a more holistic approach to informationmanagement is needed to meet the demands of today’sbusiness world and get a better handle on the increasingcomplexity of IT system landscapes. The most widelyaccepted definition of ILM is that issued by the StorageNetworking Industry Association (SNIA), a vendor neutralassociation of storage companies, application softwareproducers, and analysts (among others) who have joinedforces to deal with information management questions andrelated topics. SNIA defines ILM as follows:

Information Lifecycle Management iscomprised of the policies, processes,practices, and tools used to align the businessvalue of information with the most appropriateand cost effective IT infrastructure from thetime information is conceived through its finaldisposition. Information is aligned withbusiness processes through management ofpolicies and service levels associated withapplications, metadata, information, and data.

This is the definition we have also adopted at SAP. Due inlarge part to SAP’s efforts towards a shift in thinkingregarding ILM, the industry is increasingly recognizing theimportance of a more holistic approach regardinginformation management and moving away from a purelytechnological approach. It is impossible to manage data andinformation from “the time it is conceived through its finaldisposition” by only focusing on storage hardware andsoftware. A large amount of information is born inapplication systems and lives there for some time before itcan be moved to storage systems. And even when it hasbeen moved to storage, the business application still “owns”and controls the data. Therefore, if ILM is to evolve, it is

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essential for applications and storage to communicate andbe compatible.

The misconception that ILM is an off-the-shelf product stillexists in the market. Companies have to recognize that ILMrepresents a change in thinking—a new mindset regardinginformation management, which needs to be present on thelevel of each individual employee. This is the directiontoward which the entire information management industry iscurrently evolving. Our advice to companies who arestruggling with data management issues, or who arethinking about centralizing their system landscape, is tobegin thinking about a complete ILM strategy and use thetechnology that is available today to lay the groundwork fora full-fledged ILM strategy in the near future. ImplementingILM is a gradual process, and not something that can bedone over night.

In this white paper we present how companies can use thetechnology available from SAP today to implement a solidILM strategy and pave the way towards seamlesslyintegrating future SAP offerings for ILM. We also describetechnological advances that will support our customers’ ILMand retention management strategy through moreautomation and completeness and by helping to reducecomplexity. We also cover an important aspect of ILM that isoften overlooked: system decommissioning.

Why ILM?ILM is not something that was simply invented withoutreason. Rather, ILM came about because of different factorsand events that worked together and have forcedcompanies to shift the way they do business. Disasters suchas 9/11 and events such as the Enron scandal havetriggered a virtual explosion of legal requirements that coverdigital information. It is estimated that currently there aremany thousands of regulations worldwide that mandate themaintenance of electronic data, and this number iscontinuously growing. The most recent of these are thereworked e-Discovery rules in the United States, whichofficially took effect in December 2006 (see Amendments tothe Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for a summary of theactual amendments).

As a result of these changes and new laws, the value ofinformation in an enterprise has risen considerably. In fact,for some companies, information is the single mostimportant asset. Another change that has come about as aresult is that the complexity of managing this informationbased on its value has increased to such an extent thattraditional data management strategies are no longersufficient to meet this challenge. Laws are covering moreand more data types, across a growing number of industriesand countries, and in some cases for longer periods of time.It is not unheard of, in the German public sector, forexample, to have legal retention periods of 100 years. Thisis expected to lead to an even greater increase in datavolumes, to such an extent that the savings attained throughthe falling cost of storage are nullified, or even reversed.

A further reality that enterprises are dealing with is thedecommissioning of legacy system. It is not uncommonamong large SAP customers to have over 200 legacysystems they need to decommission. So far, there has notbeen a standardized solution to deal with this daunting task.One of the major questions a company has to resolve insuch an endeavor is how to ensure legal compliance for thedecommissioned data and to continue to garner the value ofthe information without having to keep the original systemalive and incurring the resulting costs. What happens, forexample, during a tax audit involving data from thedecommissioned system?

Luckily ILM has emerged in answer to these pressingquestions, largely also because of technological innovation.Without such innovation, ILM would not be possible. On theone hand, as we have already explained, what differentiatesILM from traditional data management practices is that it isa more holistic approach. On the other hand, it involvesmore automated processes, which help reduce thecomplexity of managing information and retentionmanagement. As technology and automation evolve, ILMwill become more and more grounded as a strategy.

As a result of these changes in the last four to five years,data management has developed into information lifecyclemanagement. While traditional data management aspects,such as data volume control, Total Cost of Ownership

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(TCO), and performance are still as important as they havealways been, the two additional aspects that have come intoplay and are driving ILM are technological innovation andlegal compliance.

ILM in PracticeTo show how ILM might look in practice, SAP hasdeveloped a four-phase model to depict the processes andtasks involved. The goal of this model is to provide you withguidelines on how to gain a firm understanding of your dataand how to manage it.

Simply put, ILM means understanding your data andmanaging it in terms of location and time. This entailsknowing what kind of data your company deals with andhow it is affected, where it resides, how long it must beretained, and when it must be destroyed at the latest. Onceyou know your data, you need adequate tools and solutionsto manage it – move it to the optimal storage location, storeit, access it again, for example during an audit, and destroyit once the data retention period has been completed.

Understanding your data and your processes is no smallfeat. Our four-phase model can help you break down thesetasks into clearly defined steps.

Figure 1, ILM at SAP

In the first phase, you analyze and categorize your data. Forexample, you analyze your database table to determine

specific areas that are prone to rapid growth, such asfinancial documents. You also identify the different datatypes you have, such as structured and unstructured data.Then you group the identified data into appropriate areasdepending on your needs.

In the second phase you define your policies, based on yourcompany’s legal requirements, Service Level Agreements,retention periods, etc. A typical rule or policy might concernyour financial documents. They have a residence time oftwo years, which would mean that they must be kept in thedatabase for two years before they can be archived, due tothe different requirements of internal user departments. Butthey have a retention time of 7 years in the US and 10 inGermany, which means that they have to stay in the archiveuntil the retention time has expired for each country (ideallyseparated according to the relevant regulations).

In the third phase you apply the defined policies to your dataand processes. In SAP environment this means preparingyour SAP system and all supporting partner systems (forexample storage) for the fourth phase. Here you mapgeneric terms like financial data and countries to systemspecific terms like the archiving object FI_DOCUMNT andcompany code. You also set up customizing and get thesystem ready for archiving. Often times this phase involvestest runs of your archiving sessions in a test system, toensure that everything has been customized and set upcorrectly.

Finally, in the fourth phase, you physically realize orimplement the strategy you have developed in the first threephases. The phases break down the different activities thatare involved as part of an ongoing ILM strategy. They do nothave a set beginning or end, rather they should be viewedas an ongoing and recurring process, or as we have stated,an actual change in a company’s mindset.

ILM is nothing new in the SAP environment. Many of thetools offered to support the different phases are tried andtested functions that have been used by SAP customers formany years. Other newer functions have been addedrecently in order to provide even better support to

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customers in their ILM strategy through more automationand completeness.

The Life Cycle of DataA basic concept in any ILM strategy, of course, is the lifecycle of data. Figure 2 shows this life cycle and thefrequency with which SAP data is typically accessed over itslifetime. Logically, when data is created, it is accessedfrequently. As time goes by and business processes arecompleted, end-users need to access it with less frequency,or maybe even never. At this point it makes sense from adatabase space and hence a cost point of view to move thisdata out of the database and into a file system or third-partystorage system. Here, it can still be accessed if necessary,for internal or external audits, for example. Finally, after thetime has passed that you are legally required to keepcertain data, it can be, and in some cases even must be,destroyed.

Figure 2, The Life Cycle of SAP Data

In the context of the entire life cycle, data is only modifiableand relevant for everyday business for a short period of time.The largest portion of the life cycle of data is the retentionperiod, during which the data has to be kept, but isaccessed very infrequently.

Note!In the SAP data archiving environment, residence time is thelength of time that must be exceeded before application data can bearchived. Depending on the application, the basis for calculating theresidence time can be the creation date, the posting period, thegoods issue date, and so on. If the residence time is 18 months, forexample, all of the business-complete data that has been in thedatabase for more than 18 months will be archived during the next

archiving phase.Retention period is defined as the length of time up to the point atwhich the data/documents can be destroyed. In ILM, we also speakof minimum and maximum retention period. The minimum retentionperiod refers to the amount of time data has to be at least kept dueto legal requirements, before it can be destroyed. The maximumretention period refers to the amount of time data has to be keptbefore it MUST be destroyed due to legal or other requirements. Forthe retention time it does not matter where the data resides, i.e. inthe database or a storage system. Therefore, the residence timealways falls within the retention period.

In the following sections we provide a detailed view of thestandard tools SAP has been providing to support you inyour ILM strategy. Our aim is to show you what basic ILMmeans on a day-to-day basis, by offering guidelines, helpfulhints, and tips for a sound and efficient ILM project.

SAP’s Standard Tools andFunctions to Support YourILM Strategy

As mentioned in the introduction, ILM in an SAPenvironment is supported by three main cornerstones, dataarchiving/management, retention management, andretention warehouse. Data archiving/management is astandard SAP function that has been available as part ofSAP software since the early SAP R/3 releases. Most largeSAP customers use data archiving as part of their datamanagement strategy to keep data volume growth in check.You can use the standard data archiving concepts andtechnologies for basic support in your ILM strategy.However, as you will see later on, data archiving is also thecore of the new ILM solution from SAP, on which ILMretention management and retention warehouse are built.This means that if you have already been archiving forsome time, you have a perfect foundation for a full-fledgedILM solution from SAP, and can implement it with minimaldisruption.

In this section we will introduce the first cornerstone of ILM:data archiving/management.

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Main Concepts and Technologies inData Archiving at SAP

Data archiving means writing business-complete data fromthe database into archives, and then deleting this data fromthe database. As we show in Figure 2, the term businesscomplete refers to data that is unchangeable and no longerneeded in everyday business—in other words, data that youno longer need to access on a regular basis. In this case weare only talking about structured data, meaningtransactional or business data, not unstructured data suchas attachments, scanned invoices, or incoming andoutgoing documents. Therefore, data archiving should notbe confused with the term optical archiving, which refers tothe storage of unstructured data.

IncomingDocuments

OutgoingDocuments

Archive filesPrint lists

Hyperlink

Figure 3, Optical Archiving vs. Data Archiving

Figure 4 shows the steps involved in data archiving at SAP.Note that archiving data does not imply that data is removedfrom the system. Rather, it implies that data is removedfrom the database. Therefore, even after it has beenarchived, it is still considered to be part of the system andcan be accessed if necessary.

Figure 4, Data Archiving at SAP

The following concepts are the main building blocks of SAPdata archiving. They play an important role in the fourphases of ILM, and, as you can see in Figure 1, support youin the management of your information throughout the lifecycle of the data.

Archiving Object: The archiving object is one of the mostvaluable data archiving concepts in the context of ILM. Itrelieves you of a good part of the tasks involved in theanalyze and categorize and the apply policy phases.

Figure 5, Archiving Object

The archiving object is a logical object of related businessdata. In other words, it contains the definition of the logicalunits in business processes. It also contains the programsnecessary for the archiving of its particular data (primarilywrite and delete programs), as well as the definition of the

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required customizing settings for archiving that data. Whenyou archive the related business data that has beenpredefined in the archiving object, the data is written fromthe database to archive files using the corresponding writeprogram, and then deleted from the database, using thecorresponding delete program for that reads the safelyarchived data.

Tip!With SAP ERP 6.0 and current industry solutions, SAP offers morethan 600 archiving objects and classes (see Categorizing). Theycover business processes and data across all components andindustry solutions. The top 30 archiving objects, such asFI_DOCUMNT, cover the most important and most commonlyimplemented business processes at customer sites.

Experience at several customer sites have shown that you can oftendecrease your data growth rate by about 50% using only around 20of the top archiving objects.

Archive Development Kit (ADK): ADK is the fundamentaltechnology on which data archiving at SAP is built (for theABAP environment). It provides the necessary technologicalbasis for all archiving processes and programs, and is alsoused by both SAP development and customers to developnew archiving functions, including reporting (see Figure 6).In addition it is responsible for ensuring, for example, thatdata is retrieved correctly when accessed in the archive,through the adjustment of code pages, formats, or structuralchanges. It can handle data archived before and after aUnicode conversion. Other technical issues, such as thecompression of the data that is archived and file handling,also fall under the responsibility of ADK.

Figure 6, Archive Development Kit (ADK)

Archive Administration (transaction SARA): ArchiveAdministration is the central user interface from which youcan perform most of the activities involved in data archiving.These activities include Customizing, starting the differentprograms (write, delete…), checking archiving statistics andlogs, managing archiving sessions, and maintaining ArchiveRouting, among others.

Archive Information System (AS): The ArchiveInformation System is the main indexing tool in the dataarchiving environment and is fully integrated into dataarchiving.

Figure 7, Archive Information System (AS)

You can use AS to define indexes called archive informationstructures for searching and accessing your archived data.This tool plays an important role in the life cycle of SAP data,since it is one of the main ways to support access toarchived data, in case of an audit, for example.

Tip!The Archive Information System is an extremely flexible tool, whichallows you to tailor your search capabilities to match your specificneeds. For example, you can create very slim indexes for searchesthat are either specific, or for high-volume searches (large amountof data with few selection criteria).

Document Relationship Browser (DRB): This tool can beespecially helpful during both the analyze and categorizeand the realize phase. It helps you better understand yourprocesses and the relationships between the different data

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in your system even after some of the data has alreadybeen archived. With it you can display the business objectsalong a business process and show how they are related.The benefit is that the relationships shown by DRB includethe data in the database as well as the data that is alreadyarchived, thus providing a full picture of a business processand its data.

Figure 8, Document Relationship Browser (DRB)

Archive Routing: With Archive Routing you can createrules and conditions based on which archive files areautomatically routed to specific locations in the file systemand/or content repositories at the time of archiving. It cansupport you in your ILM strategy, because it allows you tosegregate data based on different criteria, such as companycode, or date.

File System

Germany

USA B

A

File System Content Repository

For storage systems connectedthrough file system (HSM,magnetic disc systems)

For storage systems connectedthrough ArchiveLink (DVD,WORM/MO, CD)

ContentRepository

1ArchivingSession 1

ArchivingSession 2

Company Code0010

Company Code0020

Selection criteria forarchiving

Database

CompanyCode0010

Rule 1

Rule 2CompanyCode0020

ContentRepository

2

Germany

USA 2

1

ContentRepository

Figure 9, Archive Routing

For a detailed view of how Archive Routing works, see theArchive Routing Close Up section below.

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Archive Routing Close Up

Archive Routing is a newer data archiving function, whichwas released with SAP NetWeaver 7.0. It was developed inclose cooperation with an Americas’ SAP Users Group(ASUG) influence council concerning the common issuesome customers are facing regarding how best to segregatearchived data to facilitate the final destruction of data andprovide support for legally compliant data retention in termsof data placement.

These issues have become a focal point for manycustomers, in part because of the growing demands of legalcompliance and also because of ongoing TCO concerns.Some laws mandate that certain data be kept in the countryit is created. Other data needs to be immediately destroyedas soon as the required retention period for this data haspassed. In other cases, companies may prefer to destroytheir data as soon as the legal retention period has beenfulfilled, even though this destruction may not be required bylaw. This strategy is often implemented to free up storagespace and ease administration costs, or so that this datadoes not represent a liability for the enterprise, should anylegal situation come up. With archive routing, although itdoes not offer any functions to deal with retention time, youcan at least segregate the archived data so that the manualenforcement of retention times is easier to implement.

The length of the required data retention period variesgreatly and depends on many factors such as the industryand its specific legal requirements, type of data, the countrywhere this data is produced, and many more. If yourcompany has several international locations and operates indifferent industries, for example, managing the storage anddestruction of data can get quite complicated. Having aclear concept for organizing, or “segregating”, archived datacan make this task much easier and more productive.

Archive Routing supports you in this endeavor. BeforeArchive Routing, you could specify one file system folder orcontent repository per archiving object in data archivingCustomizing, into which the archive files for that archiving

object would be written. This helped you segregate yourdata per archiving object, regardless of other criteria, suchas company code or fiscal year, for example. Until recentlythis was sufficient. However, with increasingly complex datamanagement scenarios and the growing pressure to betterand more efficiently manage data along its lifecycle, ASUGmembers required more automation and flexibility in thearea of data segregation.

With Archive Routing you can create rules and conditionsbased upon which archive files are automatically routed tospecific locations in the file system, and/or contentrepositories at the time of storage. It provides support alongthe life cycle of your data and requires that you plan out howyou manage your archived data until its destruction – foryou to be able to enter valid rules, conditions, file systemfolders, or content repositories, you should have a clearpicture of which data needs to be kept and for how long,and whether or not it must be destroyed immediately afterfulfilling its legal retention period.

Note!During data archiving data is first written to the file system and canthen be optionally moved to a third party storage system. These arestorage systems that are either directly connected to the file system,such as magnetic disc-based systems or HSM, or are accessiblethrough the ArchiveLink interface, such as DVD, CD, WORMsystems. Archive Routing covers both options, because it allowsyou to set up rules for routing to a folder in the file system and/or tocontent repositories.

Entering the Rules and Conditions using the example ofContent RepositoriesFigure 9 shows an overview of the concept of ArchiveRouting. You can enter rules for routing only to specific filesystem folders, which serves those storage systems, suchas HSM or magnetic disc systems, connected directly to thefile system. It is also possible to set up rules and conditionsfor routing only to a content repository. This approachserves those storage systems, such as WORM orJukeboxes, which are connected via the ArchiveLinkinterface. It is also possible to use file system and contentrepository routing concurrently.

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The lower part of Figure 9 shows the actual routing processafter you have set up the rules and conditions. These areset up in data archiving customizing, where you can createrules for each archiving object that determine which contentrepository is to be chosen at the time of storing. For eachrule you enter conditions, which contain selection criteriaand a corresponding value or interval. The criteria used inthe rules and conditions can be on the level oforganizational unit (such as company code) or time-based(such as fiscal year), or both. It is possible to create one ormore rules per archiving object and one or more conditionsper rule. The complexity of the rules depends on howspecific your criteria are for separating the archived datainto different content repositories.

Tip!Handle Archive Routing with care and keep it small and simple! Ifrules and criteria become too numerous and too complicated, it maybe difficult to trace any problems, should they occur.

The smallest unit for which a content repository can bedetermined using Archive Routing is an archiving session.This means that the individual archive files, and therefore allthe archived data in an archiving session, are routed to oneand the same location. If you want to route data for thesame archiving object to different locations, you must start aseparate session for each separate location, using differentselections matching another routing rule.

The Archiving ProcessDuring the archiving process the rules you entered inCustomizing are checked twice by the system: once duringthe write session and again during the storage phase. Notethat Archive Routing does not use the actual contents of thearchive file to determine the content repository, but theselection criteria entered in the variant for the write session.The set of data covered by the selection criteria in thevariant does not have to be exactly the same as the rangeof data covered by the routing rules and conditions - ratherthe variant selection must fall inside the range provided bythem. If this is not the case, the archiving session isterminated. If it is the case, the archiving session is carriedout and the archive files are routed to the appropriatelocation during the storage phase.

From Archive Routing to Information RetentionManager (IRM)

As mentioned, Archive Routing was released with SAPNetWeaver 7.0, as the answer to some of the pain pointsour customers were facing. It was also a first step towardsILM, because of the support it provided for legal complianceand data destruction strategies. It is a very good basic datamanagement function, and can help you get started on yourILM strategy.

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Additional Standard Functions andConcepts to Support ILMILM is about knowing your data and your businessprocesses so well that you can control them in the mostefficient and cost-effective way possible. Broadly speaking,this covers all the data and information produced within yourcompany, from e-mails and in- and outgoing documents tostructured or transactional data. In this white paper, we willcontinue to concentrate on structured data to illustrate howyou can use SAP programs and functions to support yourILM strategy (however, you can apply the model to allinformation in your environment).

Before you can begin to manage anything, you must firstknow what you need to manage and how much of it there is.This is done in the analyzing and categorizing phase. Thereare many standard tools and functions within your SAPsystem that help you obtain a close to complete picture ofyour system and the data in it, how much of it there is, howmuch it has grown, and where the pain points are. In thischapter, we want to show you some of the most importantones:

AnalyzingDatabase Monitor (Transaction DB02): A good place tobegin checking the state of your data and system is with thedatabase monitor. With this transaction you can find out thesize and number of your database tables and indexes anddisplay their growth history. You can also view a variety ofother important database-specific indicators. The display ofthis transaction varies depending on the database you areusing.

Tip!You can also use other supporting tools to run further analyses ofyour database activities, including ST03 and BRSPACE for Oracledatabases. BRSPACE is part of BR*Tools (for more information seeSAP Note 12741). Transaction DB15, which is used to determinewhich archiving objects correspond to which tables and vice versa,for some databases, can also be used to see how large a specifictable is (Space Statistics push button).

Table Analysis (Transaction TAANA): Once you have anoverview of the state of the database and know, for example,which tables are growing the fastest, you can use the TableAnalysis function to further analyze the contents of thetables. This function enables you to find out how manyentries a table contains for a specific field such as companycode or date. This can help you determine more specifically,for example, where in your system the pain points are interms of data growth. Based on this information you canbetter plot your archiving strategy during the Realize phase.If you want to reduce the size of your database quickly, forexample, you may want to archive those years with themost entries in a particular area.

Figure 10, Table Analysis (transaction TAANA) shows thecomponents of the Table Analysis function. To run ananalysis you need to use an analysis variant. You can eitheruse one provided by SAP or create your own. You can alsouse ad-hoc variants, which serve only once and cannot besaved in the system, although the results of the ad-hocanalysis are saved for later review.

Analysis Details

Header

Variant Definition

Figure 10, Table Analysis (transaction TAANA)

Archive Administration Statistics (Transaction SARA):Knowing your data also means knowing what you havealready achieved through archiving—if you have archivedbefore—and how much space has been freed through theseprocesses. The Statistics function in Archive Administrationprovides you with comprehensive information about

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archiving sessions, the data objects written, and theduration of the different jobs involved in data archiving (write,delete). Moreover, you can see a close estimation of thedatabase space that was freed through data archiving andthe amount of space occupied by the archive files. ADKcollects these statistics during the write and delete phasesof data archiving. You can display the statistics by enteringspecific selection criteria, such as archiving session, client,or archiving object. You can also display the statistics for allarchiving objects.

CategorizingCategorizing structured data can be difficult, due to thecomplex relationships and dependencies between thedifferent data in a system. In this area SAP has alreadydone a good part of the work for you, especially with respectto data archiving.

Business Object: SAP business objects represent actualbusiness objects from the real world, such as sales ordersor invoices. This type of encapsulation reduces complexitybecause the inner structure of the business object remainsconcealed. From a technical point of view, a business objectis an instance of a business object type that has concretevalues. Business objects are managed in the BusinessObject Repository (BOR), where their properties aremodeled and their relationships to one another stored.

Archiving Object: The archiving objects we explainedunder SAP’s Standard Tools and Functions to SupportYour ILM Strategy, are directly related to SAP businessobjects. They cover a majority of the business processesand data across all components and industry solutions. Thearchiving object already covers the complex dependenciesand relationships between the data, so that you do not haveto determine these on your own. The following examplegives you a better idea of what this means. Without thearchiving object, you would only be able to archive this dataif you manually determined the relationships between thedata from the list of tables shown. Considering that SAPoffers over 600 archiving objects and classes, you canimagine the amount of time and effort it would take to dothis for all the data you need to archive.

Example: Archiving Object SD_VBAK – SalesOrdersWhen you use the archiving object SD_VBAK, the system archivesdata from the following tables:

Table Table Name

AUSP Characteristic Values

CMFK Storage Structure for the Error LogHeader

CMFP Storage Structure for Errors Collected

FMSU FI-FM Totals Records

FPLA Billing Plan

FPLT Billing Plan: Dates

INOB Link between Internal Number and Object

JCDO Change Documents for Status Object(Table JSTO)

JCDS Change Documents for System/UserStatuses (Table JEST)

JEST Object Status

JSTO Status Object Information

KANZ Assignment of Sales Order Items –Costing Objects

KEKO Product Costing – Header

KEPH Product Costing: Cost Components forCost of Goods Mfd

KNKO Assignment of a Cost. Est. Number toConfig. Object

KOCLU Cluster for Conditions in Purchasing andSales

KSSK Allocation Table: Object to Class

NAST Message Status

SADR Address Management: Company Data

VBAK Sales Documents: Header Data

VBAP Sales Documents: Item Data

VBEH Schedule Line History

VBEP Sales Document: Schedule Line Data

VBEX SD Document: Export Control: Data atItem Level

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VBFCL Sales Document Flow Cluster

VBLB Sales Document: Release Order Data

VBSN Change Status Relating to SchedulingAgreements

VBUK Sales Document: Header Status andAdministrative Data

VBUP Sales Document: Item Status

VBUV Sales Document: Incompleteness Log

VEDA Contract Data

Furthermore, the following archiving classes are involved toarchive data from additional tables:K_TOTAL, TEXT, CHANGEDOCU, K_UNITCOST,CU_CONFIG

Note!Archiving classes are mechanisms used to archive data thatcannot stand alone from a business point of view and is archivedtogether with application data objects. Examples of data archivedusing archiving classes are SAPscript texts, change documents,and classification data.

Tables and Archiving Objects (Transaction DB15): Thisfunction helps you get a better idea about which data iscovered by a particular archiving object or which archivingobject covers particular data. You can use this function todetermine from which tables a specific archiving objectarchives data. You can also enter a specific table to helpyou choose which archiving object you should use, if youneed to reduce the size of this table through archiving.

Defining and Applying PoliciesPhases two and three of our ILM model deal with definingpolicies based on your company’s internal and externalrequirements, and then applying those policies to the datayou have identified in the first phase. In other words, youmap generic terms, such as financial data, or country, tospecific terms in your system, like FI_DOCUMNT orcompany code. This phase also means setting up yoursystem and taking the necessary steps to pave the waytowards the implementation phase.

To put it simply, first you find out what kind of data and howmuch of it you have. Next, you must find out what yourinternal and external requirements are and see what needsto be done in terms of preparing your SAP system as wellas partner storage or other complimentary systems, so thattheory can be put into practice.

Internal requirementsYour internal requirements are largely dictated by thebusiness and the user departments and how they use thedata in the system. These requirements are often formalizedin Service Level Agreements (SLAs). For example, basedon its business processes the controlling department mayhave the specific need for the data to be kept online for acertain number of months. The residency of data anddocuments in an SAP system is highly dependent on thebalance between system health and user communitydemands to view and modify that data. Communicationbetween IT and the different user departments is of utmostimportance here, because often users will request longerresidence times for data, based on the unfounded fear thatdata is no longer accessible once it has been archived.

Tip!The Data Management Guide (DMG) is available to SAPcustomers and is an important document to support you in theDefine and Apply Policy phases. It currently covers about 70database tables across different components and solutions, whichare often among the top 20 database tables in our customers’systems. The DMG provides tips and tricks for the best strategy forthe data in these tables. For each table it covers data prevention,aggregation, deletion, and archiving. It is updated on a quarterlybasis and is available in the SAP Service Marketplace under quicklink /ilm.

External RequirementsClosely related are the external requirements, which areusually dictated by laws and regulations, such as SarbanesOxley or HIPAA, and which in turn influence businessprocesses and hence internal requirements. Mostcompanies have made headway on building a legalcompliance strategy, but as the number of requirementskeeps increasing, more and more effort has to be exerted inthis area. Focus is particularly on automating legalcompliance processes. As we have seen, here SAP is

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making important advances to support its customers. Inaddition to the Retention Management and ILM functions wehave described, SAP also offers Solutions for Governance,Risk, and Compliance (GRC). For more information seewww.sap.com/grc.

Based on the internal and external requirements you havecollected, you must set up some kind of guidelines or rulesfor the data in your system, as well as for the data outside ofyour system. A key concept that comes into play here is thelife cycle of your data (see Section 1) and the frequencywith which it must be accessed, or whether or not it shouldor must be destroyed after a certain number of years. Thiswill greatly influence how long certain data has to be keptonline, what data can be archived and when, and whichdata can be destroyed.

Tip!The Data Retention Tool (DART) is a tool that is widely used in theUS and in recent years also in Germany, for tax relevant data. Ittakes extracts of data, which can later be used in case of a financialaudit, even if the data has been archived. SAP highly recommendsrunning DART extracts before data archiving.

Data RetentionData retention policies lay out exactly which data must bekept for how long, and where, either online, or in some kindof a storage system. Although the existence of a “CorporateDocument Retention Policy” may not be advertised, mostlarge U.S. and global companies already have some type ofpolicy regarding the retention of documents (paper) anddata. Many recent Sarbanes-Oxley Act initiatives may haveidentified and/or updated these policies. For example, oneof the most common general retention rules in the U.S. isseven years for IRS or tax relevant data and documents. InGermany the general retention rule for tax relevant data isten years. Many organizations have additional legal policiesbeyond their “Corporate Document Retention Policies”.These legal polices were usually developed as a result oflegal experiences. One common policy includes legal holdorders.

Retention policies may vary for a single business object bycompany code, plant, sales organization, or some otherunique qualifier. This has to do with the fact that different

countries have different laws and legal requirements thathave to be taken into consideration.

The groundwork for every successful ILM strategy beginsnot only with the technical identification of business objectsin the SAP system, but a comprehensive inventory of thepolicies and regulations that are specific to eachorganization.

End-of-Life of DataAnother important point to consider when defining yourpolicies is the end-of-life of your data. Many SAP customersin the US, for example, are approaching their seven yearanniversary of going live with SAP. For some data manycompanies use seven years as the rule for keeping originaltransactions in ERP systems. After seven years, and insome cases earlier, the IRS does not require you to keepsome of the underlying original business data. That doesnot mean that data does not still posses value for yourorganization, only that the original document can be purgedor destroyed without risk of violating IRS procedures andincurring penalties. Keeping original documents longer thanseven years could not only violate your document retentionpolicy, but expose your company to unnecessary liability. Inaddition, in general, it pays to keep the total amount ofretained data as small as possible, to avoid unnecessaryeffort and costs related to the management of that data.

Tip!In close cooperation with ASUG, SAP developed the Guide to FinalDeletion of Data. This guide deals with the end-of-life of data in anSAP system, and discusses the complex relationships between datathat have to be taken into account if you want to delete certain datafrom your system for good. It is available in the SAP ServiceMarketplace (service.sap.com) under quick link /ilm.

As part of its new ILM solution, SAP is beginning to offernew features that will support you in the data destructionprocess (see Main Concepts, Processes, andTechnologies in Retention Management).

Deciding When and What to ArchiveAnother consideration in prioritizing the business objects onyour retention schedule is gathering business requirementsfor each archiving object—if the data were to be archived

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and destroyed tomorrow what would the impacts be on thebusiness? One consideration in this regard would bewhether or not you should build and populate SAPNetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI) info cubes with theinformation before it is destroyed. There are different issuesto contemplate in this respect, concerning legal compliance.In some cases, for example, the same data available in BImay not have any legal repercussions for your business,even after the legal retention period for your data is overand the original data has been deleted. This may be due tothe fact that data in BI is often highly aggregated and can nolonger be identified as belonging to a specific object.However, this should be decided on a case by case basis,and should be carefully analyzed before the final deletion ofthe original data. Another question would be whether or notDART extracts need to be taken for tax-relevant data,before data archiving, and which DART field catalogs wouldbe best to use.

Based upon your above findings, you will need to develop acomplete retention schedule.

Applying the PoliciesNow that you have defined the policies for your data, youmust begin to transform your rules into action. This meansdeciding how your policies can best be supported bytechnology, what settings need to be made in your SAPsystem, which archiving objects you should use, whatcustomizing needs to be performed, how best to supportend-of-life of data, what partner solutions and storagesystems you need to use, and how these should be set up.It may also entail choosing the most important archivingobjects for archiving, deciding on the selection criteria forarchiving, or scheduling and running DART extracts.

Tip!If you are using data archiving as part of an ILM strategy, it isimpractical to include all 600+ SAP standard archiving objects inyour project. Chances are good that your organization is not usingall 600 business objects, but many of the motivations for archivingare greatly diminished after the top 20 or so archiving objects.Therefore, every ILM strategy must prioritize business objectsbased on criteria such as data value and liability or risk of notdestroying data in accordance with your retention schedule.

Tip!Use transaction DB15 to determine which archiving objects tochoose in your particular strategy. See the Categorizing above.

Realize: The “Doing” PhaseThe last phase deals with the actual doing part of your ILMstrategy. Someone once said that ILM is 90% policy and10% technology. We tend to agree with the general idea ofthis statement and in a standard functions scenario seemost of the technology, as part of this last phase. However,automated support for the other phases is growing andbecoming more sophisticated in ILM from SAP described inthe next sections. Nonetheless, without a proper anddetailed plan, technology cannot be used in the mostoptimal way possible. So let’s return to our ILM example toillustrate how this might look in practice.

A typical data archiving projectBased on your data retention policies and the analyses youhave made, you have set up an archiving project anddetermined that you need to first archive financialdocuments, before you can archive the related transactionfigures and customer master data. You know that thearchiving object to use for financial documents isFI_DOCUMNT. Your archiving strategy is company wideand includes all your branches, which are located in the U.S.and Germany. You have determined that you want todestroy the archived documents after a certain number ofyears, when they are no longer subject to legal retentionrequirements, to free up storage space. Based on yourinternal requirements and the differing legal requirementsfor each location, you have determined that in the U.S. youneed to keep the archived financial documents for sevenyears and in Germany for ten. You have also designated theappropriate storage location for each. Your DocumentRetention Policy also demands that data from the previousand current fiscal year be kept in your database. Since weare in the year 2007, you know that you can only archive thefinancial documents from 2005 and earlier. This being yourfirst archiving project, you have a lot of data to archive in theinitial phase and decide to archive intensively on threeconsecutive weekends at first. After that you can reduce

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your regular archiving sessions for financial documents toonce a quarter.

You know that it is highly probable that your company willbe audited by the IRS in the next five years. Because youmay need to access your archived data at that point, youdecide to keep the archive files of the most recent data fromup to 6 years ago in the file system. You are also requiredto provide the financial authorities with financial data onexternal media. Therefore, you have taken DART extracts ofthe data before archiving and have saved them on discs.The other years and the data archived in Germany aremoved to a tape library, because it is highly unlikely that youneed to access this data again, before its final destruction.For the data that you expect to have to access you havefilled archive information structures.

Note!Archive information structures are indexes on archived data.They are a central element of the Archive Information System andare necessary if you want to access archived data.Sometimes these infostructures can get too large. SAP offers a newfunction called partitioning, where you can control the size of thetables by using creation date criteria.

In the last sections you have seen how the standard dataarchiving/management functions can provide basic supportfor your ILM strategy. More automation and technologicalsupport of ILM helps reduce complexity, effort, and thecosts of implementing an ILM strategy. With its new ILMsolution, described in the next sections, SAP provides thenecessary technology and functions for a more automatedILM strategy.

ILM Solution from SAPAs mentioned, the ILM solution from SAP consists of threecornerstones:

1. Data archiving/management: focuses on data volumemanagement

2. Retention management: focuses on end-of life data3. Retention warehouse: focuses on end-of-life system

The first cornerstone, described so far in this white paper, isan integral and necessary part of the overall ILM solutionfrom SAP; it is the core of ILM from SAP. In this section wedescribe the other two cornerstones and show how,combined with data archiving/management, they provideend-to-end support for your ILM strategy.

Non-Disruptive Innovation andOpen InfrastructureThe new ILM solution from SAP offers new functions andcapabilities for more automated and comprehensive ILMsupport. While the traditional tools and functions involved instandard data management provide basic support in yourILM strategy, the new ILM solution from SAP builds uponthe traditional functions. Because the new solution is sotightly integrated with the traditional data management tools,implementing ILM from SAP will not disrupt your currentdata archiving practices.

In the first version of ILM from SAP, ILM support is availableonly for SAP systems. However, the new ILM solution hasbeen designed in such a way that later on it can also beused as an infrastructure for ILM strategies for non-SAPsystems. Through open interfaces and the use of standardsthe new ILM solution is open to technology partners andindependent software vendors (ISVs) and in the future canbe extended to also serve non-SAP systems.

Main Concepts, Processes, andTechnologies in RetentionManagement

The second cornerstone, retention management, involvesdifferent tools and methods for managing all aspects ofretaining data based on legal requirements. This includesretention policy management, ILM-aware storage integration,managing the destruction of data, as well as methods andtools for dealing with e-discovery and legal hold.

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Retention Management: Information Retention Manager(IRM)IRM is the central tool for managing internal and externalpolicies covering your information. It is highly flexible,allowing you to enter rules and policies based on differentcriteria including how long data should be kept, when it canbe destroyed, and the storage location where it should bestored. These policies can express (external) legalrequirements or (internal) Service Level Agreements (SLAs).They can cover structured and unstructured data, and evenpaper documents. And the rules can cover SAP and non-SAP objects. Objects can either have their own policies andrules, or certain objects can also inherit the policies fromother superordinate objects. For example, a scanned checkcan inherit the policies of the financial document it belongsto.

To allow for maximum flexibility in the creation of policies,objects are grouped into object types and policies aregrouped into policy types. Object types can be for example,sales order, financial documents, etc. Policy types can betax or product liability, for instance. For each object type inIRM, you can enter policy types, and you can decide whichpolicy types have to be considered for each object typebefore the set of rules is considered to be complete. Forexample, for object type financial documents, you wouldmost likely enter policy type tax. You also have theflexibility to determine who is allowed to enter or maintainwhich policy types. You can establish, for example, that onlyone person from the finance department may enter orchange rules for policy type tax. For each policy type youselect the parameters that determine the retention policyand decide how long and where the data is to be stored.

Figure 11, IRM and Retention Rules

Figure 12, Example of Retention Rules in IRM shows anexample of rules that may be entered to reflect the retentionrequirements derived from tax laws (policy type “tax”).Because these laws differ from country to country, it is notsurprising that one of the major parameters that determineshow long a document has to be maintained is the country.Note also that tax laws may not only require a certainretention period, but also the location where the data is tobe stored. This means that in your retention policy you canalready designate an area in the storage system, wherespecific data is to be archived, much as you would do inArchive Routing.

Figure 12, Example of Retention Rules in IRM

Retention Management: Legal HoldAdhering to data retention policies is a prerequisite for anyILM strategy. In addition, it is necessary to be prepared forexceptional prolongations of the retention period by legalholds. As mentioned, legal hold and e-discovery are verycurrent topics companies are dealing with, especially in theUnited States, due to the recent changes to the e-discoverylaw, which went into effect at the end of 2006 (seeBackground to ILM, under Why ILM?). Legal holds arekind of “freezes” placed on information and data that is ormay be involved in a legal case. This means that eventhough the retention period for certain data may havealready expired and the data could be destroyed, if a legalhold is place on it, it must be retained until the legalproceedings have been completed. These issues also needto be addressed by ILM.

The legal hold management function was developed usingSAP Case Management, and is therefore also tightly

FinancialDocuments

FinancialDocuments

SalesDocuments

6

10

Min.Retention

Time

US_01

DE_01

ArchiveStore

USA

DE

USA

Country

-

-

Max.Retention

Time

Years

Years

Unit forRetention

Time

FinancialDocuments

FinancialDocuments

SalesDocuments

7

10

Min.Retention

Time

US_01

DE_01

ArchiveStore

USA

DE

USA

Country

-

-

Max.Retention

Time

Years

Years

Unit forRetention

Time

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integrated with existing SAP functions. It allows you set uplegal cases and manage all information related to that case.Once a legal hold has been set on a specific document orgroup of documents, all other policies and rules for thatdocument are overridden until the legal hold has been lifted.This ensures that no document is destroyed until the legalproceedings or case has been closed. It is also possible tohave several cases per object. Legal holds are handled asexceptions in IRM. To ensure that both data in the databaseand archived data in the storage system are covered by thelegal hold indicator, metadata is passed in the form ofWebDAV properties to the storage system (see Figure 13,Legal Hold).

In addition, legal holds are not only passed to the store forarchived data. They are also considered when the option“data destruction” is chosen to select data for destruction inthe database.

Figure 13, Legal Hold

Retention Management: Automated e-DiscoverySupportWhereas legal hold deals with preventing the destruction ofinformation, e-discovery deals with collecting all informationthat is relevant to a specific case. In a large applicationsystem environment this is not always easy. The newretention management functions of SAP allow you toautomatically or manually collect the information related to aspecific legal case.

E-discovery for SAP data is facilitated by special reportsthat are connected to a legal case. SAP delivers someexample reports that can be used directly or serve as a kind

of “template” for special reports that have to be adapted tothe specific requirements of the case under consideration.

For all objects associated with a case and discovered eithermanually or via a discovery report, SAP offers the option ofextending the legal hold to objects belonging to the samebusiness process. This is done by using the knowledge ofthe business relations that is also utilized in the DocumentRelationship Browser (DRB).The discovered objects are not copied into the legal case,so as to avoid redundancy, but key fields of the data anddocuments relevant to a specific case are storedpersistently. The function also collects and keepscorresponding linked documents.

Figure 14, Automated e-Discovery

Retention Management: Archiving and DestructionDue to its flexibility, the IRM is the ideal tool to store andmanage all retention rules in your company. However, thetrue value of the IRM becomes evident for those objectcategories for which the rules are enforced automatically.To this end, we have enhanced archiving objects forapplying retention to business objects within the SAPBusiness Suite.

Figure 15, ILM Actions of an ILM-Enhanced Archiving Objectshows a write program selection screen of an ILM-enhanced archiving object delivered with ILM from SAP. Itoffers three different ILM actions: archiving, selection fordestruction, and writing of a snapshot.

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Figure 15, ILM Actions of an ILM-Enhanced Archiving Object

The archiving ILM action allows archiving of business-complete objects and corresponds directly to the standardarchiving function described in the first sections of this whitepaper. The system runs an archivability check to ensurethat the object is really business-complete. With the ILM-enhancements, during the write phase the system checksthe IRM rules for each object instance to determine howlong and where the object information should be stored.Based on the rules, the system writes the data to a differentarchive file; in other words, it “organizes” the archived databased on the rules you have entered in IRM. Compared toarchive routing in the SAP standard you gain the flexibilitythat the parameters for the rules do not have to be identicalto the parameters of the selection screen. You also do nothave to start a special archiving run for each combination ofparameters relevant for the determination of the rules.

In the case that you have already archived data and havearchive files from previous archiving runs, ILM from SAPprovides an ILM file conversion function. This functionenables you to adapt your old archive files to fit into the newILM environment. When you convert these files, you obtainnew files containing one to one copies of the old instances,but sorted according to the rules you defined in IRM. Onceconverted, you can easily apply your ILM policies also todata you archived years ago.

When you choose the data destruction instead of thearchiving ILM action, the system does not run anarchivability check. Instead, it checks the retention rulesyou entered for the archiving object in IRM and makes sure

that only the data that can be destroyed immediately iswritten to an archive file. In this process it also takes legalholds into account. The archive file creation is not just anintermediary step. It also helps to clarify what data isactually going to be destroyed. With this option you canfinally remove obsolete data from your database, eventhough you do not want to use archiving. It allows you toremove data from the database, even if it is not businesscomplete. This could be data whose business process wasnever formally closed, but that is still old enough to bedestroyed without any problems. Because the systemmakes sure that only the data is selected that is destructibleaccording to the rules in IRM, you are ensured transparencyin case of an audit and can prove or document which datawas finally disposed.

Figure 16, Destruction of Data

Files that have been created with the data destruction ILMaction cannot be stored. Instead, after the data to bedestroyed is removed from the database, the deleteprogram also deletes the file written into the file system bythe write program. The “detour” via the archiving programensures consistent treatment of data destruction forarchived and online data.

The snapshot ILM action is important in conjunction with theretention warehouse (see Main Concepts andTechnologies in Retention Warehouse). At this point wejust want to mention that when you choose this option, thesystem performs no other checks when writing the archivefile besides the restrictions given in the selection variant. Inother words, this option allows you to write recent data fromopen business transactions (not business-complete data) tothe archive file. To make sure that you have no data loss

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the files written with this option cannot be selected by thedelete programs. As a result, with the “snapshot” option youalways create redundant copies of data from the database.

Here, too, the system calls the IRM for each object to makesure that the content of each file contains only those objectsfor which the same IRM rule applies. However, theretention period for snapshots always remains unknown:first of all, because in most cases the date of the beginningof the retention period cannot be calculated yet, and second,because there is no requirement to retain the snapshot data,as long as the data is still available in the original system.

Retention Management: ILM-Aware Storage IntegrationAn ILM strategy can only be complete if both the applicationside and the storage side are considered. Therefore, anessential part of retention management at SAP is ILM-aware storage integration, based on secure, preferablyWORM-like, storage technology.

Figure 17, ILM-Aware Storage Integration

In an ILM strategy, the life cycle actions that occur with thedata from your SAP system are based on the rules andpolicies entered in IRM. Through the enhanced WebDAVinterface (see glossary for a definition) not only data (ADKfiles) is transferred to final, ideally WORM-like, storage, butalso metadata is passed on as WebDAV properties. Inorder for the storage system to understand and allowactions on the stored data based on the rules, it must beable to receive this metadata and act accordingly. If it does,it is considered to be ILM-aware. Storage vendors canobtain an ILM certification from SAP to show that theirstorage systems are ILM-aware.

To enable you to use ILM-aware storage for your archiveddata, you now have the option of also storing your archivefiles using the new WebDAV interface. When you choose

this option, the archive files are stored in a hierarchy thatreflects the parameters which determined the retention rulein the IRM (see Figure 19, Archive Hierarchy: Structured &Unstructured Data). Snapshots (copied data) and trulyarchived data (moved data) are stored in separate hierarchypaths, whose nodes are formed using the parameters forthe determination of the IRM rules as the origin. Forexample, in Figure 19, Archive Hierarchy: Structured &Unstructured Data the origin of node USA is country. Thenode 2000 is derived from the value entered in IRM forbeginning of retention period. Note that the hierarchy is setup in such a way that one node reflects the beginning of theretention period for archived data or the time that thesnapshot was taken.

The new WebDAV interface allows for a clear structure forstoring data, and also facilitates the passing of properties tothe storage system for each node in the hierarchy and forthe file itself. Properties with well-defined semantics are forinstance the origin mentioned above for the creation of thehierarchy, and even more importantly, the beginning and theend of the retention period as calculated for each archivefile with the help of IRM. For example, if you display thenode USA (Figure 19, Archive Hierarchy: Structured &Unstructured Data) the origin property country is attached tothe field USA in the hierarchy. On the node 2000, theproperties beginning of retention period equals 2000 andend of retention period equals 2007, because in the IRMrules a 7-year retention period was entered. The storagepartners that have been certified for the WebDAV interfaceunderstand the semantics of these properties. Thus theycan map the retention requirements determined for the dataand protect the data accordingly against destruction.

Tip!SAP has a special certification program through which storagepartners can certify that their interfaces and storage offerings areILM-aware. In Version 1.1 of the ILM certification (available forpartners from August 2007), storage partners can certify that theirstorage interface can receive and store the WebDAV properties andmetadata from the SAP application system. In Version 2.0 (BC-ILM2.0), to be available in April 2008, storage partners can certify thatthey can also interpret the semantics of these properties. For moreinformation on partner certification seehttps://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/icc

Integration and Certification Integration Scenarios

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Figure 18, ILM-Aware Storage Integration and Documents

It is also possible to manage the retention of theunstructured data that is attached to the structured data. Asalways, you store the attached unstructured data in astorage system using the ArchiveLink interface. Thereferences to the locations of the unstructured data are thenstored in a second hierarchy that corresponds to that of thestructured data (if this exists already). The location of eachdocument (incoming or outgoing documents, scannedinvoices, etc.) is stored in the corresponding collection (seeglossary for a definition) in the mirrored hierarchy as itshosting archived business object. This way, theunstructured data appears close to its correspondingstructured data and inherits the same life cycle metadata.

Figure 19, Archive Hierarchy: Structured & Unstructured Data

Note that even though unstructured data is stored using adifferent interface, it is entirely possible and even intendedthat both the structured and unstructured data is stored inone and the same enterprise archive, depending on theinterface openness of the storage vendor.

When you are choosing a storage system to support you inyour ILM strategy, it is important to check whether it meetscertain criteria. For example, it should support both the non-deleteability as well as the destruction of data on request.This will ensure that your data is kept for the entire retentionperiod required by law, and then destroyed at the correctpoint in time. Another important factor to consider is whetherthe storage system supports you to reduce redundancy asmuch as possible. Likewise, a storage system should beable to guarantee that stored data cannot be changed ormodified in any way. From our experience, WORM-likemagnetic storage technology is best-suited for the purposeof ILM from SAP.

So far we have introduced the basic concepts, terms, andtechnologies involved in both data management andretention management, and indicated the roles they play inILM. Now we want to focus on the third cornerstone of ILM.

Main Concepts and Technologies inRetention WarehouseAn ILM strategy is not complete without taking intoconsideration that a lot of data has to be retained longerthan the system is available in which it was created.System decommissioning is becoming increasinglyimportant especially for large companies. With mergers andacquisitions, the trend towards system landscapeharmonization and consolidation, and constant efforts forcost-cutting, some large SAP customers are many systemsthey are trying to decommission.

So far there has not been a standardized method forapproaching such endeavors, which bring with them awhole new layer of complexity. Most data can only beinterpreted in the context of its original system and datastored in SAP archive files is no exception. However, datafrom decommissioned systems is not exempt from legalcompliance issues or from tax audits. To meet thesechallenges up to now customers have had to create theirown strategies and solutions.

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With the retention warehouse, SAP now offers astandardized method for system decommissioning inanswer to these pressing issues. It allows you to reuse thearchived data outside the original system in a centralretention warehouse. The retention warehouse is made upat least of a stand-alone SAP NetWeaver system or areused SAP NW BI system (plus SAP ERP for DDICinformation in the first version of ILM from SAP).

Retention Warehouse: The ProcessWith ILM from SAP, a system that is to be shut down is firstemptied of its data using standard and ILM-enhancedarchiving objects and programs. Here it is important to notonly archive the data objects themselves, but also contextand customizing information, such as currency information,and country codes, for example. In a first step you archiveall the business-complete data. Next you use the snapshotfunctions to archive data from objects that are not business-complete yet and the context data we just mentioned.

The retention warehouse is tightly integrated with the othercornerstones of ILM, to ensure, for example, that data fromdecommissioned systems is also covered by the retentionpolicies in IRM. This means that retention times or evenlegal holds apply to the data from the decommissionedsystem in the same way as they do from other systems.

Once the original system has been shut down and all thenecessary information has been moved to the retentionwarehouse, it may be some years before it is needed again.If, for example, an audit is pending, you can then selectspecific data and load it into the SAP NW BI for reportingpurposes. This way, auditors can view the data even fromdecommissioned systems.

In the next section, we describe in more detail, how theretention warehouse processes work.

Retention Warehouse: Transfer of Context Data to theArchiveThe snapshot option introduced in the retentionmanagement section is a first step towards helping to retainall data even after a system has been decommissioned. Inaddition to the business complete data that can be moved to

the archive with the standard archiving option, it is possibleto copy data from open business processes to the archive tobe retained as well. This data is kept separately from thearchived data. The snapshots belonging to potentially opentransactions can therefore be used as a good base formigration projects that take over the open businesstransactions into follow-on systems.

Having moved all business-complete and businessincomplete transactional data out of the system to bedecommissioned, it is also necessary to enrich the archivewith context information. For this ILM from SAP offersspecial programs to move complete customizing or masterdata, or other information not covered by the archivingobjects to the archive. You can then decide on a table-by-table basis, which of the information you want to retain. Tofacilitate the selection of relevant tables, SAP alreadydelivers preconfigured programs to cover informationdefined as retention relevant for tax reasons. Note thatbeside additional data from database tables also knowledgeabout object relations and domain values can be moved tothe archive in a standardized way.

After you have “emptied” out the system, it can be shutdown. The data is now located in the retention warehouse.

Retention Warehouse: Building Work Packages for BIRetaining all necessary information for an audit in thearchive is an essential prerequisite for fulfilling retentionrules. However, it is equally important to provide sufficientreporting capabilities for the archived information. This hasto be done without increasing the cost of storage for thearchived data. Assuming that the archived data is accessedrather seldomly, it is not economically feasible topermanently provide all indices on the data necessary forfast and comfortable analyses during an audit. Thereforewe chose a two-step approach to combine cost-efficientstorage with comfortable reporting: In a first step a workpackage is defined using the archive hierarchy built from therules maintained in the IRM to identify the relevant data inthe archive; in a second step the data defined in the workpackage is transferred temporarily from the archive intoSAP NW BI for detailed analysis.

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The starting point for each work package is a list of archivefiles created with one of the components included in ILMfrom SAP, called ILM Store Browser. It allows you tonavigate along the hierarchy and pick the branches of thearchive that contain data needed for the desired analysis.The ILM Store Browser can make use of the origin propertythat was passed to the store when the nodes of thehierarchy were formed and it allows you to apply filterswhen browsing the hierarchy based on this origin. Forexample, it is possible to restrict the browser to certaincountries or fiscal years assuming that those were used indefining the IRM rules.

Figure 20, Selecting Files for Export in ILM Store Browser

The outcome of the work with the ILM Store Browser is a listof archive files (including format descriptions and businesscontent information) containing data that may be relevant forthe audit, called a work package. With the possibilities tofurther filter the data before transfer to BI, you can makesure that the end-user (e.g. auditor) only sees theinformation he or she is authorized to see.

Retention Warehouse: Flexible Reporting and Audits inBIIn preparation for reporting, you can set up theinfrastructures required for queries in BI, based on theformat description and business content information youalso exported into the work package, and the requirementsof the audit. The infrastructure also includes infoproviders.Once you have created these infoproviders, you cantemporarily fill them with data from the archive.

In the future, the retention warehouse will providepredefined queries for frequently used reports and analyses.The queries are based on the generated data, so thatanalyses that have been defined once can be reused. It isalso possible to define individual reports on the createdinfoproviders.

The retention warehouse keeps track of the compositionand transfer of a work package, so that the data can becompletely and automatically removed from the BI, once theanalysis on the transferred archive data has beencompleted. Several work packages can be used in parallelin the Retention Warehouse and are considered to becompletely independent data sets, which are protectedthrough authorizations and namespaces. In this way, it ispossible for user departments to run their own analyses,while an audit can be run in parallel. The work packages forboth areas can partially or completely use the samearchived data set.

Since Retention Warehouse is tightly integrated with SAPNW BI, you have the entire spectrum of analysis tools andreporting capabilities available.

Retention Warehouse: Additional Use CaseWhile the retention warehouse was primarily built to be usedfor system decommissioning, it could also be used to offer acomfortable audit environment that has little impact on theOLTP system. Assuming that you archive data on a regularbasis from your production system, you could use both thesnapshot option of the archiving objects and the program totransfer context information to the archive on a regular basis.This snapshot data is not deleted from the productionsystem, and, equally important, it is not indexed, so that it isnot included involuntarily in reports run in the productionsystem.

When you set up a retention warehouse with access to thestore used in the production system you can use thecomplete functionality described for the retention warehouse,already during the life time of the production system. Theonly thing necessary for this is a copy of the archiveadministration data from the production system to theretention warehouse. With such a setup it is possible to

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obtain a similar functionality as with DART, which wouldeliminate a major part of storing data redundantly as wasdone in the past.

ILM from SAP vs. EnterpriseContent Management (ECM)According to AIIM, the definition of ECM is:

“…the technologies used to capture, manage,store, preserve, and deliver content anddocuments related to organizational processes.ECM tools and strategies allow themanagement of an organization's unstructuredinformation, wherever that information exists.”

Thus, ECM deals with document management, inputmanagement, output management, records management,Web content management, digital asset management, e-mail management, forms management, collaboration, casemanagement, business process management, and search.It also includes the storage of unstructured data, oftenreferred to in this context as “archiving”.

In contrast, ILM from SAP manages the retention ofprimarily structured information during different stages of itslife time, from the time data is first created in the applicationuntil it is destroyed either in the application or usually in thestorage system. Along this process different aspects areinvolved, such as retention policy management, legal holds,and ensuring that the same rules continue to apply to thedata, even after it has been moved to storage (ILM-awarestorage). ILM from SAP also provides functions for legacysystem decommissioning.

Within this context, the retention of unstructured data that isattached to the structured information needs to also beconsidered; for example scanned invoices, which areattached to a financial document in the SAP applicationfrom a US system receives the same retention constraintsas the financial document (e.g. retain 7 years). Thus ILMcovers the retention also of the unstructured informationattached to structured information. (See also RetentionManagement: ILM-Aware Storage Integration).

AvailabilityILM Solution from SAPThe first version of the ILM solution from SAP will beavailable for ramp-up customers mid 2008 with SAPNetWeaver 7.0 Enhancement Pack 1. A limited number oframp-up customers will be selected through a specialreadiness check process.Unrestricted shipment is planned for the beginning of 2009,after the ramp-up process has been completed.

ILM solution from SAP will be on the global SAP price list.

ILM-Aware Storage CertificationThe WebDAV Storage Interface for the ILM Solution fromSAP Certification (BC-ILM 2.0) for storage partners will beofficially available in April 2008.

Conclusion and OutlookWith the three cornerstones of ILM, data archiving/datamanagement, retention management, and retentionwarehouse, SAP provides a comprehensive product offeringto support you in your ILM strategy. Many of the tools wepresented in this white paper are tried and tested and somehave existed for many years. The new functions weredeveloped in close cooperation with customers, and arebeing specifically designed to meet real-world pain pointsand concerns. They are tightly integrated with the standarddata archiving/management tools and care was taken tofocus on non-disruptive innovation, openness, andcompleteness.

ILM is currently in its maturation phase, both in terms ofproducts that are offered in the market to support ILM and interms of companies that are actually implementing ILMstrategies. The main goal is to reach a greater degree ofautomation and completeness, which also includes betterintegration with and interfaces to storage partner and otherpartner products. Most new developments, especially atSAP are aimed towards this goal.

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At SAP we believe that a holistic approach is indispensablewhen trying to implement an ILM strategy. This also meansthat application vendors must form closer ties with storagevendors. SAP has been extremely active in this area, andhas, among other things, set up additional storage partnercertification programs for data archiving and ILM-awarestorage.

ILM is not something that can be implemented over night. Itis, however, something that can begin right now, especiallywithin an SAP environment. How can you start? Begin byusing the standard tools and functions SAP offers—as ILMfrom SAP has been developed to be as non-disruptive aspossible, you can lay the groundwork now for easyintegration of ILM from SAP later. Also, you can furtherprepare by following some important recommendations:Avoid the storage of archive files onto non-magnetic mediato facilitate the destruction of data in the future; usingarchive routing can also help in this respect, as itautomatically segregates your archived data into specificareas in the storage system; when you archive, make sureyou do so in correlation with your retention rules and avoidmixing the data in your archive files. This makes managingand finding information much easier in the future; upgradingto SAP ERP 6.0 will allow you to obtain new ILM functionsas they are being rolled out; finally, if you are thinking aboutcentralizing your storage system or implementing a newstorage system as part of your ILM strategy, make sure yourstorage partner is certified for ILM-aware storage.

Additional InformationFor more information on the following topics, visit theprovided links:

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)o http://service.sap.com/ilm

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)o http://www.sap.com/grc

Partner Certificationo https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/icc

SAP Insider Articleshttp://www.sapinsideronline.com/

o From Data Management to InformationLifecycle Management

(July 2007)o Time is Ripe for ILM (Special Feature),

(April 2007)o SAP’s Strategy for End-to-End Success

(January 2008)

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GLOSSARY

Archive Administration (transaction SARA) –Central data archiving interface for most useractivities in data archiving, such as schedulingwrite and delete jobs, setting up and deleting thearchive index, storing and retrieving archive files.

Archive Development Kit (ADK) –Technical framework and basis of SAP’s dataarchiving solution. ADK is a software layerbetween the SAP applications and the archive,and provides the runtime and administrationenvironment for all SAP data archiving functions.ADK also provides a programming interface fordeveloping archiving programs at SAP or atcustomer’s site.

Archive Information Structures –Central element of the Archive InformationSystem (AS). Represents a type of index basedon a field catalog and can be used to findarchived data in the archive.

Archive Information System –A generic tool for searching archives, which isfully integrated into data archiving. The searchand display of data is based on archiveinformation structures, which the user can defineand fill with data from the archive.

ArchiveLink –Interface for controlling communication betweenan SAP application and an external storagesystem. It enables data and documents from theSAP application to be stored and accessed.

Archive Routing –Central tool for setting up rules and conditionsbased on which data is automatically routed tospecific areas in the storage system.Automatically segregating archived data in this

way supports legal compliance strategies, byfacilitating the destruction of data, and providingcompanies with more automation and control overthe storage location of specific groups of data.

archiving class –Mechanism used to archive data that cannotstand alone from a business point of view and isarchived together with application data objects.

archiving object –Logical object of related business data in thedatabase that is written from the database to anarchive file and then deleted from the databaseonce it has been archived successfully. Anarchiving object also includes the correspondingarchiving programs as well as Customizing.

business complete –data that is unchangeable and no longer neededin everyday business—in other words, data thatyou no longer need to access on a regular basis

business object –Represents a central business object from the realworld, such as an order or an invoice. From atechnical point of view, a business object is aninstance of a business object type that hasconcrete values. Business objects are managed inthe Business Object Repository (BOR)

collection –A node in an archive hierarchy, which is used tostore archived documents, called resources, orother collections.The concept of a collection is similar to that of afolder in a file system. Collections are physicallystored in a storage system. There are threecollection types: 'S' = System, 'H'= Home and 'A'=Application.

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data –The physical representation of information in anyform

data retention policy –Set of rules governing the storage (archiving) anddestruction of data

deletion of data –Process that removes information from matter orenergy, or prevents it from being accessed. Datacan be deleted without any loss of information if itis ensured that the information contained thereinis stored redundantly in other data.

destruction of data –Process that deletes the data while either takingthe loss of information deliberately into account, orexplicitly having this in mind.

electronic discovery –Also called e-discovery, refers to any process inwhich electronic data is sought, located, secured,and searched with the intent of using it asevidence in a civil or criminal legal case.

end-of-life of data –The point in time when the end of the retentionperiod has been reached and the data can bedestroyed

end-of-life of system –The point in time when a system is permanentlyshut down. This concept is relevant for ILM,because often times due to legal requirements,data lives longer than the system in which it wasproduced.

Hierarchical Storage Management System (HSM) –A storage solution that automatically distributesdata according to individually configured rules(such as the frequency of access) within ahierarchy with different storage media (such ashard disks, magneto-optical disks, and magnetic

tapes). An HSM system is represented to theaccessing system as a file system that stores thefiles saved there in a file path that cannot bechanged logically.

information –“Information is information, not matter or energy”(Norbert Wiener, 1961). “Information is the singledecision between … equally plausiblealternatives” (H. Gardner, 1987). As such,information is the smallest unit of knowledge.

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) –Information Lifecycle Management is comprised ofthe policies, processes, practices, and tools usedto align the business value of information with themost appropriate and cost effective ITinfrastructure from the time information isconceived through its final destruction. Informationis aligned with business processes throughmanagement of policies and service levelsassociated with applications, metadata,information, and data.

Information Retention Manager (IRM) –Tool used in the context of Information LifecycleManagement for storing ILM-relevant policies, e.g.data retention policies, residence time policies. Itcan be extended to include other ILM-relevantpolicy categories for data stored, for example, inTREX or BI and non-SAP data.

legal hold –A type of “freeze” placed on data records, if legalauthorities have decided that an organizationmust preserve certain data records when litigationis anticipated or confirmed. Records on which alegal hold has been placed must be retained (e.g.they cannot be destroyed) until the legal hold hasbeen removed.

object type –concept used in the information retention manager(IRM) for a grouping of objects within a particular

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object category. Object types can be sales order,invoice, financial document, which all belong tothe object category "business object".

optical archiving –widely-used but inaccurate term for documentstorage. The storage system used is generallybased on optical media (CDs, WORMs, etc.),which is why the term “optical” archiving is used.

policy type –concept used within the IRM for the grouping ofrules. Policy types can pertain to taxes (TAX),product liability (PROD), risk management (RISK)

residence time –The length of time that must be exceeded beforeapplication data can be archived. Depending onthe application, the basis for calculating theresidence time can be the creation date, theposting period, the goods issue date, and so on.The residence time is usually given in days.

retention management –Methods and processes to manage the retentionof data based on legal requirements. With thehelp of technology these methods involvemanaging retention policies, ILM-aware storageintegration, destruction, legal hold management,and e-Discovery.

retention period –Length of time that indicates, based on legalrequirements, the maximum period of time inwhich a document, such as a financial documentor an invoice, must be retained before it can bedestroyed. Retention periods may vary from onecountry to another and for different types ofrecords (e.g. financial data of an enterprise,receipts for tax-deductible purchases etc.)

WebDAV Interface –

Interface used for communication between theSAP system and ILM-aware storage systems, tosupport ILM processes.