SAP Data Archiving is the SAP supported method for data archiving in SAP enterprise systems. SAP Data Archiving enables the user to keep the size of sensitive enterprise database under control. Archiving capabilities in SAP R/3 are provided across all modules by a built-in, centralized component (SAP ADK, Archive Development Kit) and add-on components such as ArchiveLink^®. Both these components deal with SAP data in form of special objects, known as Archiving Objects.

This paper discusses in detail the basic process used by Archive Development Kit (ADK) and ArchiveLink^® for data archiving. But before understanding ADK, it is important to understand the concept of Archiving objects.

Archiving objects are the essential ingredients for archiving SAP data. An archiving object can be defined as a logical unit, which is obtained from SAP data objects. When data objects are combined on the basis of requirements, a business object is formed, which then can be archived.

Archiving objects instruct the SAP archiving system to get the right tables when archiving specific R/3 business objects. They are defined using transaction AOBJ.

The archiving objects are defined for different modules of a SAP system. For example, financial accounting documents are archived via the archiving object FI_DOCUMNT, which comprises the document header, company-code-dependent postings, change documents, SAPscript texts and other elements. Some archiving objects with their basic functionality are listed in the table below.

Each archiving object has automated associated methods. The table given below describes these methods in brief. These methods are the functions or subroutines, which work with archived objects.