How to export cluster tables ? Please help !!

[symon_braunbaer]

Dear Experts,

I have got the very nice task to export a few tables from a database. It worked quite OK,

till I have attempted to dump the BSEG table !! It is a cluster table and listed only in

SE16, but on DB level it's a ghost - nothing in dba_tables, nothing in dba_objects...

BR*Tools have no idea about it either...

I have been googling a LOT, but the only stuff I found is what a cluster table is, how to

create one and how to proceed with expdp in an oracle RAC environment

Please kindly advise on that! Many thanks in advance!

[JamesZ]

Hi,

If BSEG  is a cluster table, maybe you can try to find the table cluster which holds the content of BSEG, which is

actually existing in database. Then try to export this table? According to SAP note

2169933, the physical table is RFBLG.

Best regards,

James

[symon_braunbaer]

Hello James,

thanks, but:

1) It turned out, that we need to dump the data in text format !!! I have NO IDEA how big this will become !!

2) Unfortunately, it is not true, that the table is RFBLG. For reorg purposes, it might be true, that this is the table that one has to specify for BRSPACE, but if you compare the available fields in SE11, the difference is HUGE:

and there are MUCH more fields, check also the scroller which I have highlighted in red.

We need to export ALL those fields, not only the fields in RFBLG.

Hence, kindly suggest another way to proceed...

[fidel_vales]

Hello Symon,

Unfortunately for you James (and Stefan) is correct and you are wrong.

Clearly you have no clue what a SAP Cluster table is and what its format is (even when you were told several times).

BSEG is an SAP LOGICAL TABLE (its content can "only" be seen from inside SAP) and it is stored inside the PHYSICAL CLUSTER table RFBLG.

Each row of RFBLG contains all rows from BSEG (and other tables) with the same primary key. All columns that you see in SE11 are stored INSIDE the field VARDATA.

You can find more information about cluster and pool tables on the SAP documentation, for example, here

As BSEG is a "logical" table, you cannot access its content directly from outside using not SAP tools (or at least it is not "easy") so you need R3LOAD (SAP tool) to do so.

I'm sorry it is not the answer you "like" but it is how "cluster" tables work @SAP

[symon_braunbaer]

Hello Fidel and many thanks for the nice words!

You may be right and all the data is contained in the VARDATA field, but as you said, it's not visible outside of SAP:

VARDATA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3700E176E080F415F6C5354225DA022E314BC143CF228A36B79355B8148C1AC18B41FD2AF4C5B506

DB4B635F5C334F207308FF030053000000

3D000BC6389E8E0089581D61908A92B2806A6873B8C428050F3D8B28B3B9952CC3A560D4085E8C51

5F5CAB080334617B6AEC8B6BE609640EE17F0053000000

...

But I have been tasked from our functional team to export this to a text file, because they need to submit this to the government tax office for audit purposes and I have no clue how to do it, hence please kindly advise what you would do, if you were in my skin.

Thank you in advance!

[fidel_vales]

Hi,

You may be right and all the data is contained in the VARDATA field

Thank you for still not believing anyone answering you in this thread and not reading the documentation I pointed to.

I said that it is not possible to read the data from outside SAP, still you check it with SQL*PLUS(?)

kindly advise what you would do, if you were in my skin.

If I were in your skin I would ask the functional people to create an SAP program to do export the data as it is not possible to do it (easily or at all) with "Oracle" tools

If I were tool I would be reading like crazy anything I can about R3TRANS (also another SAP tool) as Joef already told you  4 days ago.

Those two are the only options you have, so you can start ready or typing code

[symon_braunbaer]

I think I already mentioned this, but I have done it with R3trans on friday and now they are saying,

that this is a binary file and they actually need a human readable text file (which they didn't tell me before), so R3trans seems to be the only possible way and then I will direct them to coding this, because they have ABAP skills, and unfortunately I don't...

[Former Member]

As you have found out, your database doesn't know anything about table BSEG. So it will come as no surprise that database tools will not be useful for exporting table BSEG.

Try SAP tools instead; read about R3trans.

Hope this helps

[symon_braunbaer]

Hi Josef,

thank you, I have already read about it, but implementing a WHERE clause with R3trans is a nightmare, also I compared the speed for transparent tables and the Oracle data pump is soooooo much faster !!!

So, I am interested how this can be achieved using expdp...

[stefan_koehler]

Hi Symon,

> I have already read about it, but implementing a WHERE clause with R3trans is a nightmare, also I compared the speed for transparent tables and the Oracle data pump is soooooo much faster !!!

The speed may be different now, but you can tune the R3load approach with Oracle tweaks as well to a maximum (trust me ). However you just need to understand the cluster table format and then you can do anything else with native SQL (or expdp) too. I already posted some PDF on SCN ( ), that describes the cluster table structure and how to handle it (in Oracle, not in HANA - i just posted it in the HANA forum).

Regards

Stefan