Consolidated Database
The customer can contact the organization through various means and the organization can in turn interact within it self and with its vendors through various means as well. Middleware acts as the central figure during such interactions.
All data coming from Mobile clients or CRM Service is saved on the CRM server.
Data is stored on a CDB i.e. Consolidated Database on the CRM Server.
Partial data is copied from R/3 server to CDB. The only exception to data save becomes evident in case of personal data.
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Data management for mobile clients is specially done in a consolidated Database (CDB) on the CRM Server. To ensure data consistency and synchronization, a copy of each object in the entire system (mobile system of distributed databases) is kept in CDB.
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However this does not mean that CDB also maintains a copy of all the objects in an R/3 database as well. Instead, only a part of the data is copied from the R/3 server to the CDB in order to enable the Mobile Sales Scenario. Also note that this replication of Mobile Sales data is a two way process which essentially means that some Mobile data is also replicated to the R/3 system for logical connection and business flow enabling between the two systems in a mobile sales/service scenario.
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Personal Data is an exception and a copy of personal data for a client is maintained only on one or more dedicated Mobile clients and is marked as private data.
What is CDB?
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The consolidated database or CDB is the logical overall database of the CRM Mobile. It is located on the CRM Server and contains all the data that is supposed to be distributed.
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Contains some application data as well.
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For “employees” in the field force, the CDB is divided into partial datasets in order to allow them to work independently. They do not work online on the overall database, but rather on the mobile sites (laptops) with local, geographically distributed datasets. The logical overall database is said to be fragmented in this case.
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CDB is divided into partial datasets in order to allow different employees to work independently. It is important that the partial datasets conform to the requirements of the employees in the field force. This means that each remote employee is given access only to the data for which he or she is responsible. The employee then manages “his/her” data (be it customers, contact persons, orders or appointments) on a local database.
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Generally speaking, there will be a degree of overlap between the various partial datasets into which the overall database is divided. The phrase “replicated data storage” implies that there may be several different employees in the same system, who are all responsible for managing a given item of data and who could make changes to it.
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Hence some special features are required to handle such a scenario where the same information content is maintained in more than one place. These have been listed in the next slide.
Features desired
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It must be possible to fragment the entire database down to the level of individual objects. Thus it must be possible, for example, to assign customer A to employee X, while making employee Y responsible for customer B.
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Data that is administered and maintained in several locations must be regularly exchanged and brought into line with the other affected locations, so that the datasets remain consistent. (automatic administration of redundancy; i.e. automatic maintenance of the look-up tables)
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Changes to the datasets on the local databases (for example through a change of responsibility) must be performed automatically (automatic fragmentation changes; that is Realignment.
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At any time it must be clear who is responsible for maintaining which data (transparency of fragmentation and replication).
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In order to provide the functionality, CRM Middleware offers a number of mechanisms, maintenance tables and fields.
Access to the Consolidated Database
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CDB is accessed via the CDB service. All BDocs for CRM Mobile are routed through CDB Service by the flow control.
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CDB Service is the only service that has access to the CDB Database tables.
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