CDC Configuration using LT Replication server - 1

[Phani_Chava]

Data inconsistencies may occur due to many reasons and if not fixed may cause some serious problems for business process.

SAP provides many tools to fix data inconsistencies. In this blog we will discuss what and why data inconsistencies occur and different tools provided by SAP.

What is Data Inconsistency and Why it happens?

What: Data inconsistency is a situation where there are multiple tables are updated with conflicting data from different sources. This will lead to unreliable information as it will be difficult to determine which data/version is correct.

Why: Data inconsistency occurs due to multiple reasons. Below listed are a few of them:

• When a user provided Incorrect manual entry of data inputs


• Logical inconsistencies can be observed in application integration between two systems


• Errors in application programs like transactional correctness


• Data loss due to Hardware failures may cause inconsistencies in DB


• Some data has been replicated multiple times between two systems


• Inconsistent data storage in multiple systems using sRFC/HTTP within one business step. What data arrived where?

What is Data Consistency Management (DCM)?

• Data Consistency Management in Solution Manager comprises the tools and procedures required to prevent, detect, investigate, and correct inconsistencies in your landscape. This helps to ensure the successful execution of your core business processes and prevents costly business process downtimes.


• Utilizing these tools will help resolve inconsistencies which are caused manually or technically, and these can be automated which will avoid systematic process exceptions.


• Global transparency across organizational units & process variants through increase visibility of current data quality and consistency state.


• Higher customer satisfaction & faster revenue stream by avoiding delayed business documents and financial losses by quick reaction to interface errors affecting data of core business processes.


• More accurate business reporting by avoiding inaccurate reporting data by ensuring consistency between systems and quicker clean up due to earlier detection


• Higher reliability of financial reporting & possible detection of fraud by avoiding avoid inconsistencies in FI-AP and FI-AR before PEC. Review consistency between MM & FI and between systems.

What are the tools of DCM and how to use them?

Data Consistency Management majorly consists of 4 phases

1. Prevent


2. Detect


3. Investigate


4. Correct

Solution Manager provides several tools to cover the Data Consistency Management cycle. Below listed are the few:

1. TC tools for ABAP and JAVA


2. Guided Self Service for DCM


3. Internal Data Comparison


4. Data Consistency and Interface Monitoring


5. Cross Data Comparison

Further information on these tools is provided here.

For this blog post we will be concentrating on how to use Cross Data Comparison Tool (CDC) using LT Replication server.

What is CDC?

• Cross Database Comparison (CDC) is a tool in SAP Solution Manager used to check if data is consistent between two systems especially if one is non-SAP system


• This application is used to compare data sources with a complex structure or hierarchy


• Using CDC, we can check whether the data in the source and target systems is consistent, for example, whether updates in the source system have been correctly replicated to the target system


• Examples of complex data sources are sales orders with several billing items or a customer master record containing multiple addresses, partner roles, and bank details


• Even though the data sources must contain the same data logically, they can have different values once they have been forwarded to a different system, for example from an ERP system to a CRM system


• Typical use cases include ad-hoc or regular end-to-end comparison of master or transactional data exchanged between multiple systems including non-ABAP system

What can we achieve using Cross Data Comparison?

• CDC is a generic application which can be used to check the data consistency between both ABAP-ABAP, ABAP-non-ABAP systems.


• Data can be compared at any time or we can schedule regular comparisons also.


• We can create comparison data models using CDC in which we can specify which table and key fields the comparison should occur.


• We create comparison group which contains several comparison definitions which are grouped logically and started and stopped together during the comparison run.


• We schedule comparison runs, in which we can specify when and how often to compare the relevant data sources.


• We can display the comparison results from where we can see the inconsistencies observed in the data sources.


• We can display the results of the comparison in Business Process Monitoring and in the BPO dashboard as well.

Why CDC?

CDC have many use cases and benefits, some of which are listed below:

• Offers easy to use graphical UI to enter data model


• Offers possibility to save and re-use comparison parameters and data model


• Extracts data from sources and executes comparison in SAP Solution Manager


• Offers functionality to save and display comparison results


• Allows splitting comparison data into multiple blocks of configurable size


• Supports integration into Business Process Monitoring

In this blog post we have covered What is Data inconsistency and Why it will occur.

In the next blog post we will discuss in detail how to configure CDC using LT replication server.

Further information is provided in below SCN WIKI:

SCN WIKI

Regards,

Phani.