On the journey to S/4HANA and the increased attention on data archiving and legal compliance, many SAP users are asking if SAP DART (SAP Data Retention Tool) is still needed if SAP ILM (SAP Information Lifecycle Management) is implemented. This article will provide a high-level overview, and will focus on the different components of SAP ILM, and SAP DART to help answer this question.
SAP ILM is a solution provided by SAP (additional licensing required) that comprises of two components:
- SAP ILM – Retention Management – Enhances standard data archiving capabilities in a live system by adding ILM rules (retention rules based on legal and application requirements), stores archive data files on an ILM-certified WebDAV server and enabling destruction once the retention period has expired. Retention Management also provides e-Discovery and Legal Hold capabilities. When the e-Discovery process is executed within the context of a legal case, the relevant documents are automatically transferred to the legal case and placed on hold. Documents which are placed on hold for a legal case cannot be deleted or destroyed.
- SAP ILM – Retention Warehouse (System Decommissioning) – Offers decommissioning capabilities of legacy SAP and non-SAP systems. Data is archived/extracted from the legacy system(s) and transferred to a standalone SAP ILM instance known as ILM Retention Warehouse (RW). After the data has been transferred to the RW, ILM rules (retention rules based on legal and application requirements) are applied, the archive data files are stored on an ILM-certified WebDAV server and enabling destruction once the retention period has expired. The Retention Warehouse also offers reporting capabilities of the archived data. This reporting can be necessary, for example, for tax audits within the legally required retention periods.
SAP DART is a tool that is provided as a part of the SAP Business Suite (no additional licensing required). The main purpose of SAP DART is to help companies meet legal data requirements for tax audits by retaining finance and tax data from an active SAP application. Data is exported as “DART Extracts” from a live SAP database and stored in text format. Upon an audit request “DART Views” are used to process the DART Extracts to pull the requested data to support the audit and then export the output in the AIS format (Audit Information System format) which is submitted to the auditor. SAP DART not only handles standard SAP tables but can be enhanced to pull data from custom tables. Based on tax/audit requirements, DART Extracts may have a retention period (how long the DART Extracts should be kept), however SAP DART does not offer retention management process for the DART extracts, and the destruction of the files must be done manually.
Back to the question… Does SAP ILM replace SAP DART?
For SAP ILM Retention Management scenario, the answer is “No”. In this scenario, SAP DART is a complement to SAP ILM Retention Management and should be executed before data is archived from the database.
For SAP ILM Retention Warehouse (System Decommissioning) scenario, the answer is not so clear. The word “replace” can be misleading taken at face value. However, with the SAP ILM Retention Warehouse (System Decommissioning) scenario, SAP DART is not needed. When executing a system decommissioning the “Snapshot” archiving option is used which archives/extracts business complete as well as business non-complete data (no archivability check) which is similar to data pulled in the DART Extracts. When responding to an audit request with SAP DART, the appropriate DART segments which correspond to tables are used to pull the required data and deliver it in the AIS format (Example: The TXW_FI_HD segment corresponds to BKPF table (FI Document Header)). When responding to an audit request and data is stored in SAP ILM (RW), from the appropriate Audit Area the required SAP ILM object is chosen from which tables can be selected for the audit packaging process to be delivered in AIS format (Example: The SAP ILM Object: FI_DOCUMNT corresponds to BKPF table (FI Document Header)).
| Data Source | Requested Table | Access Point | Audit Data Retrieval Process | File Output |
| SAP DART | BKPF | SAP DART Segment: TXW_FI_HD | DART View | AIS Format |
| SAP ILM (RW) | BKPF | SAP ILM Object: FI_DOCUMNT | Audit Package | AIS Format |
As you can see in the above table, the output from SAP ILM Retention Warehouse is the same as SAP DART when responding to an audit request. In fact, if SAP DART is implemented along with an SAP ILM Retention Warehouse solution, it will add complexity as well as cost to the overall solution.
