SAP Note 16082 - FI archiving and release independence

Symptom:

The question as to whether and to what extent archived data for various archiving objects, in particular FI documents, can be archived and reloaded/evaluated independent of release levels has been raised.

Cause and prerequisites

Release changes have also brought about changes in table structures and in the format of the archive files.

Solution

SAP's stance on this is as follows:
In the case of documents, users with 3.0 and above can read and reload all archive files in Releases 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and above. In Release 2.2 this is no problem as from 2.2c For 2.2a-b note 13910 must be taken into account. In Release 2.1 this is no problem as from 2.1i Note 13910 should also be taken into account for Release 2.1a-h.
As from Release 2.2a. it is possible to archive transaction figures. Archived transaction data can be reloaded in every release below 2.2.
Master data is archived as G/L account, customer, vendor or bank master data. Up to and including Release 2.2, no reload or evaluation programs were available in the standard version. As from Release 3.0 there will be reload programs for G/L account and bank master data which can read archives of Release 2.0 and above. Customer and vendor reload programs will be available with Release 3.0a.
Check archiving is possible as from Release 3.0a. As from Release 3.0, archived checks from all releases can be reloaded.

From a technical point of view, release independence is guaranteed by the fact that table strutures are included when data is archived and taken into account when the data is reloaded/evaluated. The reload/evaluation programs also know which file structures have so far been used and read the file with the corresponding format.

Special cases and exceptions

• The above stipulations apply for standard structures. If customer modifications have been made, for example to the document item table, reloading data regardless of Release version can only be guaranteed if only 'Add fields' (fields attached at the end) were carried out.

• Also keep in mind that no change documents or additional texts were archived for any objects from earlier than Release 2.0, and that they are therefore not reloadable.

• Basically, no automatic code-page, number format or structure adaptations are possible for archives from Release 2.0. Make sure that the underlying hardware and operating systems save numbers and ASCII values in the same format at the operating system level for these archives.

• In Releases 2.1 and 2.2, the reloading programs (for documents and
  transaction figures) do not use automatic code-page conversion, although this information is already stored in the archive file. This has been updated for Release 3.0. For reloading in 2.1 and 2.2, you therefore need to make sure that the code-page/number format matches with any different platform; otherwise you cannot reload the data using different platforms.