Can TDMS help system copy of Prod to QA? It's time consuming in BCS 6 / BI7

[Former Member]

Hi,

Can TDMS help with a system copy requirement in SEM-BCS 6.0 / BI7?

We're looking at a regular scheduling of copying our production system to our QA system.

However, in the past there has been difficulties in performing this task that has led to inconsistencies in the technical names of both Transformations and DTPS and delta initialisations.

I've sent an OSS note to see if SAP support/recommend performing a heterogeneous system copy of BCS 6 / BI 7 environments and if there are any best practices to follow.

Specific issues to address include

- When BI Production is copied to BI QA, links are lost and have to be re-created which causes a break in the initialised delta loads. All data then need to be deleted and reloaded to ensure consistency and integrity.

- Has the internal technical names on DTPS and Transformations been fixed so that upon a later transport the system knows which DTP or TRFN needs to be overwritten. In BI 7 SP9 after a system copy the ability to transport these dtps was lost until a program was written to manually delete these objects in the target system. I believe this has been resolved as of later support packs but are there examples of customers performing a regular system copy.

This was never a problem (that I was made aware of) in BCS 4.0 / BW 3.5

Can anyone advise me how TDMS would help in this situation?

Has anyone implemented TDMS to copy systems in BCS 6.0 / BI7?

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

I doubt that TDMS will help here.

The only thing you can do to avoid that is to copy the full landscape, means, not only the BI system but also the connected ERP backend - at the same time.

If you copy the BI only, the backend need to be made "aware of" if you don´t copy that one too and that´s the reason why you have to delete the delta requests and do an initial load to have a point to start.

This is not true for BI only but for all systems using qRFC/CIF/ALE to load/exchange data. The "best practice" guides recommend to always copy the full landscape.

Markus

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Markus,

Do you know where I can find such best practice guides?

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

Spontaneously I found

https://websmp204.sap-ag.de/~sapidb/011000358700003128302006E

Markus

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Scotsman,

The TDMS scenario for BW is in ramp-up phase at this moment. Also for CRM scenarios. SRM and SCM will also follow.

I know this because we (Uphantis Netherlands) are Expertise Partner for Optimized IT and joining the ramp-up phase of BW of SAP for a customer of us.

Untill these scenarios are getting available for common use I would advise using a full system copy.

Kind regards,

Dave Arends

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Dave, please can you give us a rough idea of timelines?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

That's difficult to say. We will start with the ramp-up in Q4 of this year. Maybe in september. I think it will not be available by the end of the year.

But I'm not sure of this timeline.

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

Dave,

how are the source systems handled through such a data load? Are they even touched?

Markus

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Markus,

With TDMS BI, the source system connections are not touched at all. while doing the TDMS implementation, you can mention a mapping of the logical system name between the source and the destination. e.g. if your sender BI (production) is connected to ERP_PROD and receiver BI (QA) is connected to ERP_QA, then you have to enter this mapping between ERP_PROD and ERP_QA during the implementation in a simple and straighforward UI.

Then the data migration already takes care doing this mapping source system names and in the receiver BI it will look as if it extracted data from ERP_QA. A prerequisite of this is that the source system connections in the recevier BI should already be defined and consistent.

Hope it helps.

Best regards,

Avinash

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Avinash.

The TDMS BW tool sounds like a really great tool for the customers specially the source system Connection handling.

(1) Can you tell me if the same TDMS BW can be used for both BW 3.5 and BI 7.0 releases or there are different versions for different BW releases available?

(2) Does it have the "SHELL creation" functionality available as in TDMS for ERP?

Regards,

Manan Desai.

Edited by: Manankumar Desai on Dec 5, 2008 6:33 PM

Edited by: Manankumar Desai on Dec 5, 2008 6:35 PM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Manan,

The same solution works for both BW 3.5 and BI 7.0.

Yes, Shell Creation functionality is available with TDMS BI as well.

Thanks and Best regards,

Avinash

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

When creating a system in BI, is the SQL script created by SMIGR_CREATE_DDL necessary?

Markus

[Former Member]

thanks for all the help