SAP S/4 Hana’s table change logging empowers businesses to easily track and monitor critical system changes, enhancing overall control and governance. By activating this feature and staying vigilant over key parameters, organizations can ensure the integrity of their data and fortify their governance practices without getting lost in technical complexities.
SAP S/4 Hana systems provide a few logging mechanisms that might be useful for admins or auditors. I would like to focus today on one of them: table change logging.
The table change logging feature allows for tracing changes made in tables. For example changes in system settings, monitoring opening and closing periods or opening a production, etc. That includes a check whether a key configuration was changed temporarily and then changed back to its original values.
The functionality is not enabled by default and a few parameters have to be set to properly enable table change logging:
- rec/client parameter – the system profile parameter that is used to activating and deactivating change logging,
- recclient parameter – the transport parameter used to log changes generated by transport,
- change log activation for a certain table.
The first two parameters are important to set the table change logging globally: the first one to activate logging for a specific client or clients.
The second one, recclient, to capture changes that were made and transported through STMS process. If settings are not enabled, the majority of changes are not captured as in SAP majority of changes are, or should be, pushed from the lower environment through a transport path. Only few of them are made directly in the production environment (for example sets used by validation and substitutions, exchange rates, tax percentages). If you don’t see any changes in RCU3 it means that no changes were made or recclient parameter is not set.
The third one is to activate a table change logging for a specific table. A table selection should be made on the basis of settings important for a company: controls framework, SOX controls or other.
Additionally, mentioned parameters should also have change log activated and be monitored to ensure proper governance. That is critically important, especially for organizations with GRC systems implemented. If one of the parameters is changed to disabled, the source SAP system stops logging changes. In such cases, the GRC doesn’t provide notification about control deficiencies but lack of notification is not caused by controls assed as efficient but improper governance over table change logging.
