Description
The archive program has the task of reading IDocs for archiving andwriting them to an archive. The actual deletion of these archived Idocsfrom the SAP database is carried out with the deletion program.The archiving program offers a number of selection parameters with whichyou can deliberately control which IDocs are to be archived. Theselection parameters are:

• Time unit


• Start of archiving before runtime (in the chosen time units)


• Time that the archive should require (in the chosen time units)


• Logical message

Message type
Message variant
Message function

• Direction

The archiving program puts together the list of IDoc numbers that weredefined by the selection criteria and transfers these to the module'EDI_ARCHIVE_IDOCS'. This then carries out the archiving of the IDocs.
After archiving, a log is output which lists the IDocs that haveactually been archived. This list may also contain IDocs whose statusdoes not allow archiving. Which status values can be archived and whichones cannot is currently determined explicitly by the form routine'INITIALIZE_STATUS_QUALITY' in the function group 'EDIA', in theimplementation of the archiving class and in the archiving programfunctionalities. This ensures that IDocs with status values intended forfurther processing are not archived.
This is the second archiving program with which IDocs can be archived asindependent archive authorization objects (there is also the reportRSEXARCA). However, this program differs from the other archivingprogram in its objective. This program is intended for periodic use andcorrespondingly provides the option of working with relative valuesaccording to the date when selecting IDocs instead of working withabsolute values. As a result, the periodic use of this program in thebackground will be especially user-friendly, as there is only onevariant that is constantly used and that needs to be maintained. Theperiod of archiving as well as the starting time is determined in thevariant used. The administrator can adjust this according torequirements. There is an option to choose the time unit, thus you canchoose whether the archiving period is in days, weeks orin other predefined time units. You should make sure here that theparameters chosen in the program variant are appropriate for the chosenbackground parameters. Otherwise the periodic execution of the archivingprogram will not be carried out in the correct sequence with theselection of the IDocs to be archived This can lead to overlaps or gapsin the archiving of IDocs.
Caution :
Only use this archiving program for IDocs if the IDocs are not archivedby the application. You must insure that IDocs are not archived if theycould possibly still be needed by the application.

Output
A log is generated in which the most important fields of the Idoccontrol records are output. In addition, the total number of archivedIDocs is output.

Example
Time unit : Day
Start archiving before runtime: 10 Days
Period of archiving : 5 Days
Message type :
Message variant :
Message function :
Direction (1=Outbound, 2=Inbound) :
At runtime, two dates are determined which define the range ofarchiving. Thus, archiving should start 10 days before runtime andinclude a period of 5 days. If the program runs in the background onJanuary 10th, all IDocs that were processed from December 31st toJanuary 4th are archived,in the next run on January 15th all IDocs fromJanuary 5th to January 9th are archived and so on.
By specifying further selection options, you can deliberately archivecertain IDocs together.

Example
Time unit : Day
Start archiving before runtime : 10 Days
Period of archiving : 5 Days
Message type : ORDERS
Message variant :
Message function :
Direction (1=Outbound, 2=Inbound) : 1
As a result, only those outbound IDocs that are allocated to the messagetype ORDERS would be archived with this program at the times describedabove.