Data archiving and Number ranges

[Former Member]

Hi,

how to ensure number ranges consistency after data archiving please? For example if data is archived and then number range is reset or changed, document with duplicate number can be created - correct? Is this problem? How to avoid it?

I am concerned about many archiving objects (MM_MATBEL, RL_TA, SD_VBAK, FI_DOCUMNT, ...), so this is general question. If there is no general answer, then I am interested in application specific answers as well.

I have found note "781802 - Resetting number ranges after archiving data". This note basically says that resetting of number ranges should not be done after archiving. Is this approach you do apply?

Thank you!

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

Archiving does not change number ranges.

If you change number ranges, then you have to do this as always and usual with special care, this has nothing really to do with archiving.

The recommendation from OSS note 781802 has its reasons, based on experience that the support desk made with customer incidents.

I certainly try to get this message over to all who are allowed to maintain number ranges in our company (not really many people)

Even the archiving programs get better, but on the number of OSS notes you can already imagine that not everything was in a good shape from the very beginning. And still archiving has not become a regular process in many companies. The more it is used the more people are checking the correctness and may find the one or other issue, e.g. that records from an exotic table have  not been archived / not been deleted.

If you reuse the numbers you may get a situation that the program tries to create entries, but cannot because such a table has already an entry for this number and the transaction will end in a dump, hence the recommendation not to re-use the number ranges.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for quick reply. Ok, so general approach is in 781802: do not re-use number ranges after data archiving. This might be stupid question, but I would like to understand it: if number ranges cannot be re-used, what happens if document numbers exceed the range? Is it even possible? And how is such situation solved when data archiving is in place?

Let me one more question: Is there more recommendations or notes related to data archiving and number ranges which you use? For example in case of Material documents, I do follow 83076 - archive MM_ACCTIT before MM_MATBEL...

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

Number ranges can overflow, they usually automatic start again with the first number in the range if you ignore all messages. The reason for this is that they often got defined without farsightedness. I seldom saw a case that it was impossible to find another space for a new range, but it can happen, then you take the risk that something strange can happen.

It would be quite a big work to find any or all SAP notes, but this is probably unavoidable if you really need to reset a number range. I just searched with: archiving  "number range"  and got 337 hits

I just picked randomly one and have already found a killer note

167155 - Archiving of Notifications

As you can read, in this case is no solution given at all.

But honestly, the purpose of data archiving is really different from making space to reuse a number range.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks again and let me final one: Is there anything which should be done before starting archiving project to avoid future problems with re-using numbers? For example: make sure that number ranges are large enough? Is there recommended size (or method to count it) of number ranges before archiving to see far enough?

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

As said, these are 2 different things.

You can do an archiving project and there is no need at all to think about number ranges

Archiving does not affect number ranges.

Contrary archiving may get in trouble itself if you archive a record with a number that was already archived, because you then get the same document number twice into info structure and you get a dump. The note 781802 explains already what you need to do to avoid this. This means as well, if you already know that number ranges have been reset after the last archiving that you you need to follow the approach from the note.

Number ranges are usually defined in the very beginning of a SAP implementation project, and hopefully you have some experienced consultants at that time who can explain what you have to consider by defining the ranges as there is much more to be considered than just reuse of number ranges after archiving.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for information Jürgen, have a nice weekend.