Best Practice 19.1 – Understand access
and retention requirements
Understand the ways in which you access and retain data. Consider active data, document management systems, and backups.
Suggestion 19.1.1 – Categorize the different types of business data in the SAP system
By categorizing the different types of data and how frequently data is accessed (data temperature) from a business perspective, it is possible to identify opportunities to archive or offload data from your SAP system to optimize cost.
The following are some of the common data types found in an SAP system:
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Reference — Data for which the values change infrequently, for example, city, country, and exchange rates
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SAP Master Data — Data for which the values change rarely, for example, SAP Customer Master, product
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Audit — Data kept for audit purposes, for example, change logs
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Transaction — Data created as part of day-to-day business operations, for example, sales orders
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Analytical — Data created to support analysis and decision making, for example, monthly sales reporting
Classify the data temperature as follows:
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Hot — Data is accessed frequently
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Warm — Data is not accessed frequently
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Cold — Data is only accessed sporadically
Classify retention requirements as follows:
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Retain for disaster recovery (DR) purposes
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Retain for reference purposes
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Retain for compliance or audit purposes
