Reliable and fast rework after SAP® system copies
TM-TMS (Transport Manager)
Transaction IMIG comes with extensive online documentation. It describes the preparations, the general procedure in the form of a quick guide, the individual steps in detail, typical error situations and the problem-solving procedure.
SAP recommends that you always update enterprise software in your production system using the SAP transport system and never make changes directly in the production system. In addition, SAP suggests that you validate change transports through a QA system that is approximately identical to the production system and has up-to-date transaction data. Outdated data can affect the validity of change transport tests, which can lead to errors and failures in the production system. However, end-user transaction data is received only from the production system. Such data must therefore be passed regularly throughout the SAP transport chain to ensure that your non-production systems have up-to-date and valid transaction data. This can usually be accomplished by passing a system copy of the production system, created for updates, to the QA system. To reduce the number of test cycles, it is also advisable to update your development system occasionally.
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SAP system deployment scenarios
Until now, it has been common practice to create test systems as a client or system copy of the production system on a specific date. In these cases, a single client or the entire SAP system is duplicated. The corresponding instances of the SAP system have to be reinstalled. In addition, a copy of the source database must be created. These are standard procedures, but they can be disproportionately expensive for productive data sets of several terabytes. SAP and third-party tools for selective data extraction can significantly reduce the cost of deploying non-production SAP systems.
The third-party providers have adapted their tools to various special areas. For example, the "Clone & Test" tool from Pecaso, which is now part of Accenture, specializes in transferring data from SAP's HR module. In addition to HR data, the "Data Sync Manager" from the provider Epi-Use makes it possible to select additional objects from the areas of accounting and logistics. As with TDMS, "Infoshuttle" from Gamma Enterprise Technologies gives users the option of selecting any data from the SAP system. For transport, the tool uses Idocs, which, however, can only be used to transfer small amounts of test data. SNP's "Data Distillery" can either write extracted data directly into the tables of the target system via RFC or generate an export file that can be imported into target systems multiple times. In the source system, users can select by objects, processes and transactions. Further selection options, for example by organizational units or fiscal year, allow a percentage of the data to be filtered out of the system as consistent test data.
A solution such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems" offers an automatable solution for many of the activities involved in an SAP system copy.
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However, updating the databases of non-production SAP systems for testing, quality assurance and development with new production data is usually a time-consuming and error-prone process that involves lengthy interruptions to the SAP software lifecycle.