Part 2 of this blog series will cover some more important aspects of NLS technology
with SAP BW
1) A prerequisite of NLS data archival is to compress the InfoCubes that you want to
archive upto the latest data load request before archival . In many landscapes
this is normally done as part of maintenance activities but if not then this might be
a time consuming process to implement on all cubes and might impact project
timelines .
2) Many times a question is asked about NLS whether archived data on NLS can be
again restored back to the live SAP BW system . The answer is "Yes" this is
possible but might lead to inconsistencies in the system and will defeat the purpose
of archival . Data reload option should be used only if there is a critical business need .
3) From a BW security perspective there are some prerequisites as well .
For BW developers to perform archival related activities under developer role,
authorization object S_ARCHIVE needs to be assigned and activity code , area
and object should be '*' .
For End Users: To read archived data from NLS , users should have authorization Object
S_RS_ADMWB with Activity Code 03,16 assigned and restricted on Object RSADMWBOBJ
These prerequisites might be specific to NLS vendors as well and you need to provide
additional authorizations if mentioned in documentation provided by your NLS vendors .
4) Another important step which is a part of NLS archival is the creation of virtual
InfoCubes . To read the data from NLS you will need to create new virtual cubes
which will actually connect to NLS . If a query is run which needs to read data from
NLS then these virtual cubes will do the trick . You would need to modify the existing
Multi Providers and queries to include these virtual cubes so that data archived on
NLS is available for reporting .
Will cover some more aspects in the next part of this series
Cheers !