Inventory Management

Inventory Management - Marker Update, No Marker Update

Marker Update is used to reduce the time of fetching the non-cumulative key figures while reporting. It helps to easily get the values of previous stock quantities while reporting. The marker is a point in time which marks an opening stock balance. Data up to the marker is compressed.

The No Marker Update concept arises if the target InfoCube contains a non-cumulative key figure. For example, take the Material Movements InfoCube 0IC_C03 where stock quantity is a non-cumulative key figure. The process of loading the data into the cube involves in two steps:

1) in the first step one should load the records pertaining to the opening stock balance/or the stock present at the time of implementation. At this time we will make marker to update (uncheck 'no marker update') so that the value of current stock quantity is stored in the marker. After that, when loading the historical movements (stock movements made previous to the time of implementing the cube) we must check marker update so that the marker should not be updated (because of these historical movements, only the stock balance / opening stock quantity has been updated; i.e. we have already loaded the present stock and the aggreagation of previous/historical data accumulates to the present data).

2) After every successful delta load, we should not check marker update (we should allow to update marker) so that the changes in the stock quantity should be updated in the marker value. The marker will be updated to those records which are compressed. The marker will not be updated to those uncompressed requests. Hence for every delta load request, the request should be compressed.

Check or uncheck the Marker Option: 

Compress the request with stock marker => uncheck the marker update option.

Compress the loads without the stock maker => check the marker update option.

Reference information:

Note 643687 Compressing non-cumulative InfoCubes (BW-BCT-MM-BW)

Note 834829 Compression of BW InfoCubes without update of markers (BW-BEX-OT-DBIF-CON)

Note 745788 Non-cumulative mgmnt in BW: Verifying and correcting data (BW-BCT-MM-BW)

Note 586163 Composite Note on SAP R/3 Inventory Management in SAP BW (BW-BCT-MM-IM)

10 important points to consider while working with inventory management

1.  There are 3 SAP delivered transactional data sources for stock management.

2LIS_03_BX : Always needed to carry the initialization of the stocks.

2LIS_03_BF :  Initialize this in source if you need historical data else an empty init can be done for this to load only future delta records. If the Source system is new then no need to do an initialization. 

2LIS_03_UM : Only needed if revaluations are carried out in Source. This data source is helpful if adjustment in material prices is done time to time otherwise it won’t extract any data.

2.  Check list for source system. Needs to be carried out before initialization of the above 3 data sources .

A.   Table TBE11 : Maintain Entry ‘NDI’ with text ‘New Dimension Integration’ and activate the flag(Note 315880)

B.   Table TPS01 : Entry should be as below(Note 315880)

PROCS – 01010001

INTERFACE  - SAMPLE_PROCESS_01010001

TEXT1 – NDI Exits Active

C.   Table TPS31 : Entry should be as below(Note 315880)

PROCS – 01010001

APPLK  - NDI

FUNCT – NDI_SET_EXISTS_ACTIVE

D.   Tcode –   MCB_  

In most cases you need to set the industry sector as ‘standard’. For more info please see Note 353042

E.    Tcode –  BF11

Set the indicator to active for the Business warehouse application entry. This entry may needs to be transported to the production system. (Note 315880)

3.  After running the setup data, check the data for the fields BWVORG, BWAPPLNM, MENGE. If no data available in these fields then some setting mentioned in the above checklist are missing in R/3. Correct the issue and rerun the setup data.

4.  Data staging with DSO for BX extractor is not allowed. Data should directly load from extractor to Cube only once. Choose the extraction mode as ‘Initial Non-cumulative for Non-cumulative values’ in the DTP.

5.  DSO is possible for BF. If you are creating a standard DSO then choose the fields MJAHR,BWCOUNTER,MBLNR,ZEILE as key fields. Some of these fields won’t be available in the standard data source but the data source can be enhanced using LO Cockpit (LBWE) to add these fields. In addition to these other fields depending upon the DSO structure is also possible.

Note  417703 gives more info on this.

6.  Point-5 is valid for UM also. The Key fields could be a combination of MJAHR,MBLNR,ZEILE,BUKRS  fields. Note 581778 

7.  Data load to the cube should follow the below process

A.      Load the BX data. Compress the request with stock marker(uncheck the marker option).

B.      Load the BF and UM init data. Compress the loads without the stock maker(Check the marker option).

C.      The future delta loads from BF and UM should be compressed with Stock marker(uncheck the marker option).

8.  If in future the cube needs to be deleted due to some issues then the load process should also be carried out as above. (only init of BF and UM should be loaded first and then the deltas should be processed)

9.  To check the data consistency of a Non cumulative cube the standard program SAP_REFPOINT_COMPLETE can be used. To check the compression status of the cube the table RSDCUBE can be refered. Before the compression of BX request, the ‘REFUPDATE’ field should be blank and after the compression the value should become ‘X’. Check Note 643687 for more info.

10. After BX data load to cube the data won’t be visible by LISTCUBE. Only after compression the data can be seen by running a query on the Non cumulative cube.