PBS archive add ons are add-on solutions for SAP Data Archiving that can be used immediately. They are tailored to corresponding SAP modules and ensure that you can access all of your data quickly and seamlessly - in both archives and databases simultaneously - even after archiving.

You need to have successfully completed your SAP data archiving. Free capacity in the file system of your operating system is also required. The software is installed in the SAP program library using SAP standard tools. The only difference from the SAP standard is a PBS-specific namespace, /PBS/, that must be created first.

Many PBS archive add ons are mainly used in SAP ERP and in S/4HANA. They correspond with the respective SAP modules. PBS also provides archive add ons for SAP industry solutions or SAP retail.

The development of new PBS solutions is pragmatic and focused on our customers' requirements. We meanwhile support most SAP archiving objects. You will find an overview under Availability by Archiving Objects. To optimize your SAP data archiving, we recommend advance implementation of PBS Database Analyzer PLUS to determine the growth rate of your data volume and which modules are particularly affected.

German, English, and French are currently supported. For all other languages, we provide a PBS translation tool (transaction /PBS/UTIL_TRANSL) with which you can automatically generate translations in the language desired for up to 95 percent of the software.

No. The authorization checks are the same as for the SAP transactions. The user profile of administrators and users has to be added for indexing and display of archived data. In addition to the general authorization for the transaction namespace "/PBS/", the authorizations S_ARCHIVE and S_DATASET with the activity 01 (Create) have to be added to the profile of administrators. End users need the authorization objects S_ARCHIVE activity 3 for "Display", and S_DATASET with activity 33 for "Read".

The access to the SAP archive via the PBS indices is at least as fast as the database access. Precondition is that the SAP archive is still in the file system of the operating system. If you use a database server and one or more application servers, the SAP archives and the PBS indices should not be on the database server because it is completely reduced from any load due to the archive access. You can also define a special archive server using the NFS mount. If you archive for the first time and the database has already some performance problems, archiving and PBS indexing have an acceleration effect because the database now works more performantly again.

The PBS programs recognize if the SAP archive is in the file system, or has been removed via ArchiveLink to an external storage system (for example PBS ContentLink) without further Customizing settings. The data is read automatically from there if required.

An access from own programs to archived data is possible. There are several options:

• The PBS archive add ons provide logical databases to access database and archive data. Programs that can be used on the basis of logical databases can be enhanced by an archive access in which the corresponding logical database of the PBS archive add ons is used.
• For single access to tables, there is a function module that enables a single access to archived data. Reports can be analyzed and conversion proposals can be generated using the so-called "Conversion Tool" (transaction /PBS/UTIL_CONVERT). The actual SELECT is converted to a "SELECT INTO TABLE", and in addition, archived data is read via the PBS function module. This tool is useful in many simple cases.
• PBS provides function modules and external subroutines to access archived data for complex reports and massdata access. The "Archive Access Tutorial" (transaction /PBS/UTIL_ACCESS_ARC) contains corresponding example programs that can also be used as template for own reports.

Since the transactions involved are highly analogous to those in SAP standard software, end users do not need special training. The SAP transaction name is preceded by the namespace /PBS/, for example, /PBS/FB03 instead of FB03.

Yes, the PBS archive add ons can be supplied for S/4HANA from release 1610.

When using the PBS archive add ons, upgrade to S/4HANA is migration free, that means you do not have to convert archive or index files.