SAP Survivorship Rules

Survivorship rules are used to aggregate information from source records on to the consolidated golden record. In particular, because the business logic for merging data that has validity periods and for addresses, emails, and phones is complicated, the survivorship rules are also complicated. Survivorship rules for each of these structures are defined in the following sections.

Survivorship of Validity Periods

The complexity of validity periods is relevant to Business Partner Roles, Business Partner Relations, Addresses, Emails, and Phones. The following are valid strategies for merging validity periods:

  • Winning set of periods, specifically 'Most Recent' and 'Trusted Source' patterns - As two sets of periods must be merged, one set is selected as the surviving set and the period that is not in the surviving set, does not survive. The winning set can be determined, for example, by a most recent date and time or a prioritized list of trusted sources.

  • Aggregate periods - As two sets of periods are merged, keep all periods, but merge periods with the same 'from' date and the same 'to' date. This pattern does not allow removing a validity period once it has been added, which may be a problem in a consolidation solution. This method is not a problem in a centralized onboarding solution, where survivorship rules are only applied as golden records merge.

  • Union periods aggregation - As two sets of periods are merged, keep all periods but merge overlapping periods to the lowest 'from' date and the highest 'to' date. This pattern does not allow reducing validity periods once they are added, which may be a problem in a consolidation solution. This method is not a problem in a centralized onboarding solution where survivorship rules are only applied as golden records merge.

  • Common periods aggregation - As two sets of periods are merged, only keep overlapping periods and reduce overlapping periods to the highest 'from' date and the lowest 'to' date.

Survivorship of Data Container: BP Role

Survivorship of BP Roles should union all Business Partner Roles across source records. In addition, it must be considered how to aggregate validity periods. Refer to the Survivorship of Validity Periods section above.

Survivorship of Business Partner Relations

Business Partner Relations vary in complexity and must be handled differently as described below.

  • BP Relation Types without Validity Periods (simple reference types)

    • If only a single reference is allowed - use a simple survivorship pattern like 'Most Recent' or 'Trusted Source'.

    • If multiple references are allowed - union all relations across source records.

  • BP Relation Types with Validity Periods (Data Container: BP Relation)

    • If only a single reference is allowed - sort all relations by 'from' date and as periods overlap, use a most recent pattern to determine which relation is shortened in period or removed, so that there are no overlaps in periods.

    • If multiple references are allowed - union all relations across source records, but merge overlapping periods to the lowest 'from' date and the highest 'to' date.

Survivorship of Addresses, Emails, and Phones

Use the following to create survivorship rules for addresses, emails, and phones.

  • Merging addresses, emails, and phones - union all objects across source records and union validity periods per address usage. This means that one data container may merge into multiple because the union on validity periods is different for different address usages of the same address, email, or phone.

  • Adding incoming SAP Address IDs to SAP Address Source Record Relations - As an incoming address is associated with a target data container object, this relationship must be added to SAP Address Source Record Relations.

  • Merging SAP Address Source Record Relations - When survivorship rules complete the merge of addresses, emails, and phone numbers, the SAP Address Record relations must be maintained. First, however, the STEP address ID on emails and phones must be maintained. Refer to the Email and Phone Number Approve Trigger section in the SAP Publishing From STEP topic here.

Survivorship of Specific Data

Use the following to create survivorship rules for company code data, sales area data, purchasing organization data, and bank data.

  • Survivorship should union all data containers and merge those with the same key.

  • Values and references on the data containers that are single valued should be merged following a single survivor pattern like the 'Most Recent' or 'Trusted Source' pattern.

  • Values and references of the data containers that are multivalued may union all values from all source records or may follow a 'Most Recent' or 'Trusted Source' pattern.