The MDM Change tracking feature allows you to monitor any modification made to your master data repository and get useful information regarding this alteration such as the old value, the person who made the change or the modification date.
Although the activation of this feature is made through the MDM console, you will need to deploy the MDM WEB UI (delivered as a portal content) in order to visualize these information.
Unlike other portal contents, the Change tracking UI queries the database in order to get the information. The MDM RKT documents contains an excellent how-to deploy and configure this webdynpro but it doesn't cover the Oracle implementation which requires a specific configuration for the JDBC connector.
Make sure you have the latest support package of MDM (MDM 5.5 SP05 at the time being, the SP06 will be soon released to public). You will also need an SAP Web Application Server with a Java stack.
If you want to use this within a portal iView, deploy the Portal software units on the J2EE engine (note 883948).
As a pre-requisite, download the Oracle JDBC driver from Oracle website. Note 867176 may help you choose the appropriate driver.
First of all, download the MDM WEB UI latest build from the SAP Marketplace Software Distribution Center. Navigate to Support Packages and Patches -> SAP NetWeaver -> SAP MDM -> SAP MDM 5.5 -> Portal Content -> OS Independent, download the .sca file and deploy it through SDM.
The next step will consist in configuring your JDBC connection.
Open Visual Administrator, navigate to Cluster -> Server
Select drivers and click on the Create button.
Name your driver (ex: Oracle_JDBC)
Load the JDBC driver file you had downloaded
You should then see your new driver in the list
Select then DataSources, create a new datasource.
Provide an application name (this one should be unique), create an alias for this datasource (it will be used later in the webdynpro configuration).
Fill the information according to your database settings.
Click on the "Additional" tab and fill these information :
- applicationName: this can be set to any name as long as it hasn't been used previously.
- databaseName: this needs to be set to
_Z000 . In our case, the repository is called CATALOGRECETTE. You may find its name thanks to the following SQL query: SELECT table_name from all_tables where table_name LIKE ‘%Z000';
- user: this should be set to the owner of your A2i_CM_History table (this where MDM stores the change tracking information). You may get the owner name through the SQL query: SELECT owner from all_tables where table_name = ‘A2i_CM_History';
- password: this is your user's password for Oracle
- portNumber: fill it according to your tnsnames or listener configuration.
- serverName: refers to the host of the Oracle instance
- url: this is the connection string that will be used by the JDBC driver to connect to Oracle. It is of form jdbc:oracle:thin:@
: .:
You may keep the default information for connection pooling.
And select "Vendor SQL" for the SQL engine.
Further information, on JDBC configuration, can be found on the SAP NetWeaver Library at the following address: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/ab/082484173ae045ab8dad8a41d33da3/frameset.htm
Make sure you have enabled tracking changes in the MDM console (Repository -> Admin -> Change Tracking), and make few changes to your master data in order to have few entries in your A2i_CM_History table.
Access your webdynpro through http://
In our case the Alias was : CATALOGRECETTE.
You may refer to the MDM Tracking changes RKT (available under Enhanced Generic Capabilities) which provides information on how to use this webdynpro with SAP MDM Data Manager or within an iView.
Faycal CHRAIBI is a NetWeaver Technical Architect at SAP and has been dealing with SOA and Enterprise SOA for a few years. He is highly interested by end to end process integration, agility and efficient model driven architectures.
