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Using two Maintables for Customer and Vendors

Former Member
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Hi everyone,

I was wondering what are the pros and cons for using one repository for storing both Customer and Vendors but within different main tables. This way Customer and Vendor records can share common reference tables such as: Company Codes, Payment terms, e.g.. Why separate these two main tables into two repositories as SAP business content provides? This also allows you to maintain these reference tables in one repository, rather than in two separate places.

Pro and Cons? Other options?

Thanks,

Matt

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

Former Member
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Hi Matt,

Pro and Cons? Other options?

Pros OR Benefits:

1. Sharing of Lookup tables (e.g. country) across repositories not supported

2. Main table objects can reference each other using a Lookup [Main] field type (e.g. a supplier can be related to several products)

3. Main table objects can recursively reference themselves (e.g. Employees reference Employees)

4. Increased consistency of lookup table entries and reduced maintenance effort (e.g. only one table for countries etc.)

5. Lower operational costs due to fewer repositories that need to be managed

6. Hardware resources (such as memory) are used more efficiently by MDM

Cons OR Downside:

1. A downtime (e.g. repository maintenance) will impact both main tables

2. Performance (like load time of the repository)

3. Increase of the number of users working with multiple main tables in one repository

4. Scalability for large number of records in repository

Other Options:

Recommendation: It makes sense to create one repository with multiple Main tables when

1. Each main table is an entity of its own (like vendor, customer, material, etc.)

2. Multiple main tables are related with each other for business reasons or that they share the same multiple lookup tables

Please refer the below blog to make the decisions of single domain repositories vs. multi domain repositories where you need to develop a prototype to see whether all requirements can be handled with the one or the other strategy.

/people/klaus.david/blog/2009/10/01/sap-teched-09--live-expert-session-multiple-domains-in-one-mdm-repository-vs-one-mdm-repository-per-domain

Regards,

Mandeep Saini

Former Member
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Hi Mandeep,

Thank you for the quick response. The Con: Scalability for large number of records in a repository. Do you know any specifics on how many main tables and reference tables MDM can support based off a certain ammount system landscape?

Our senario would be to have both Customer and Vendor main tables in one repository. There would be different user roles, based off if the user is a Local Vendor Maintainer or a Local Customer Maintainer. As far as I know you can only restrict to read access of certain tables, and could not block an entire table to specific users. So any user that has access to a repository is capable of reading from any maintable/reference table using the Data Manager, is this correct?

In the blog you sent me it states: "Keep Business scenarios is separate repositories: e.g. CMDM (Central Master Data Management) and MDM-GDS (Global Data Synchronization) both should their own repository." We currently use a CMDM team in part of our current MDM processes, I'm not familiar with this MDM-GDS? What are the differences in these senarios?

Thanks again for you help.

Matt W.

Former Member
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Hi Matt

The Con: Scalability for large number of records in a repository. Do you know any specifics on how many main tables and reference tables MDM can support based off a certain ammount system landscape? There is no specific limits for numbers, we do have guidelines though. Please follw the following doc for Dos and Donts in MDM data modeling.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/d0d8aa53-b11d-2a10-aca2-ff2bd42a8...

So any user that has access to a repository is capable of reading from any maintable/reference table using the Data Manager, is this correct? This is also true. users read access cant be controlled at table level using only MDM data manager.

I'm not familiar with this MDM-GDS? What are the differences in these senarios? Copying from the reference guide for GDS-

GDS is a sophisticated, collaborative business practice which is being rapidly adopted by trading partners worldwide. By adopting a common set of global standards, defined by the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN), manufacturers and retailers can optimize their business processes through complete, comprehensive communication through data pools

that are in turn linked to a single global registry.

Manufacturers make their product catalogs available to the data pools and retailers are then able to link to these data pools and synchronize their data automatically. This is Global Data Synchronization (GDS).

thanks-Ravi

Former Member
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Hi Matt,

Do you know any specifics on how many main tables and reference tables MDM can support based off a certain ammount system landscape?

As your requirement is to have both Customer and Vendor main tables in one repository that is 2 main tables and mostly common look-up tables for these two main tables. I think that this scenario is quite possible.

So any user that has access to a repository is capable of reading from any maintable/reference table using the Data Manager, is this correct?

Yes, I think this is right.

We currently use a CMDM team in part of our current MDM processes,

I think maintaining two Master's in a single repository is not a big deal. All you need to think about the feasibility of data flow. I mean Data governance. I mean which Master are you going to create in MDM repository (only Customer or Vendor or Both), then how are you sending data across to ERP systems and other lot of aspects. So as suggested in above blog creating Prototype to see whether all requirements can be handled with the one or the other strategy is more important.

I'm not familiar with this MDM-GDS?

Please refer below blog to have some insight into it.

/people/kees.jacobs/blog/2006/09/08/accelerating-the-gds-vision

Also refer below Article to understand the System Landscape Page no: 7/21

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/506276c9-aebb-2a10-4990-ee4652e2f...

Regards,

Mandeep Saini

Answers (0)