BPC 5.1 to BPC7.0 M upgrade

[Former Member]

Hi,

We are about to embark on an upgrade of our 5.1 system to 7.0 (Microsoft version) and would like to hear from other people that have gone through this exercise. Especially want to know the level of 'compatibility'. Is it mainly a question of after upgrading to 7.0, you can expect your applications still to work, or is there a fair amount of tweaking that needs to happen, to make them 7.0 compliant ?

What would you say are the main things to watch out for ?

Also - am noticing that as of SP3, SQL2008 is supported. Are there major benefits from upgrading SQL2005 to SQL2008 too - especially towards related to system performance.

Thanks for your feedback,

Yves.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

It is like any other system upgrade. You need to perform regression test. As a part of the test make sure you run all the reports and all the scripts / business logic and also loads with the DM.

Ravi Thothadri

[Former Member]

Peter,

When you say "excluding move to Servers" do you mean that we have to install 7.1 and 2008 to new servers or can we upgrade SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 and then apply a patch on the 5.1 Applictaion Server to bring it to 7.X. In a nut shell the question is - Can the upgrade be performed on the same hardware or we have to procure new hardware , install 2008 and 7.X and then move the Appset from 5.1 Server environment to the new 7.X server environment.

Thanks,

Ajit

[Former Member]

Yes, You may use the same hardware.

[Former Member]

There are many advantages to the new BPC 7M SP3 version; first off is the use of SQL2008. SQL2008 handles the MDX or dimension calculations more effectivly than version SQL2005. The process is basic to move from version 5 to 7; excluding moving up in servers. There are a few manual steps to make at the application set level to properly upgrade the product, plus you will need to UNINSTALL and RE_INSTALL the the BPC server components for best results, plus uninstall and re-install the admin and excel clients on all the users environments.

But I think you will really like the new performance of 7M sp3 on SQL2008, so if in doubt, contact the SAP Technical Services team that supports BPC installs and upgrades.

Hope this helps.

PS - YOU DO NOT use a MIgration Utility to move from BPC5 MS to BPC 7MS versions. ONLY migration tool is for version 4.X SP3 and higher to version 7.

Edited by: Petar Daniel on Apr 28, 2009 12:42 AM

[Former Member]

Strong test is always required to rollout. But majority of functions are 100% compatible. You should test your input schedule mainly if you are using complex one.

If you are planning to use multiple TIME hierarchy feature of BPC 7 MS, you need to review current script logic, dimension formula. if you do not use multiple hierarchy of TIME dimension (calendar/fiscal), you do not need to worry about it.

Benefit of SQL 2008 is Analysis Service calculation performance. Analysis Service of SQL 2008 has 4x faster calculation speed (dimension formula) than SQL 2005 in initial testing. Of course it is very difficult to say correct number. But I believe 2008 is definately faster.

[Former Member]

Hello Experts,

I will be performing same task (5.1 to 7.0) upgrade in the nearest future... Is there SAP documentation for that?

Thanks in advance,

Akim

P.S. Seongbae is right... SQL Server 2008 has a number of improvements in AS and Database Engine as well, so the benefit is performance should be better. Also, SQL Sever 2008 has a lot of other very usefull features such as backup compression, improved mirroring... etc.

Edited by: Akim Zubarchuk on Apr 3, 2009 3:58 PM

[Former Member]

Hi Akim,

You can get the guide from the service.sap.com

https://websmp203.sap-ag.de/instguidescpm-bpc

In that location you can find the file name called SAP BPC 7.0 SP00 M Upgrade Guide.

Regards,

JP.

[Former Member]

Any updates on your success of the migration. Please let us know, if you used the SAP migration utility for your migration ?

[former_member5075]

Hi, normally for BPC 5.1 to BPC 7.0 M we dont need any migration tool. Only for 4.2 to 7.0 we need a tool to do that.

If you dont have much of custom script logics, input schedules, it will be a easy one.

regards,

Sreedhar