Data Security During Archiving

Data archiving is carried out in two steps (a third step – storage of archive files – is optional: In the first step, the data for archiving is copied to archive files. In the second step, the data is deleted from the database.

This two-step process guarantees data security if problems occur during the archiving process. For example, the procedure identifies network data transfer errors between the database and the archive file. If an error occurs, you can restart the archiving process at any time because the data is still either in the database or in an archive file. This means that you can usually archive parallel to the online application, that is, during normal system operation, without having to back up the database first.

You can further increase data security if you store the archive files in an external storage system before you delete the data from the database. This guarantees that the data from the database will only be deleted after it has been securely stored in an external storage system. You can define the storage time in archiving object-specific Customizing.