Is remote version comparison of Workbench objects no longer possible with NW750 SP13?

[BaerbelWinkler]

Hi Folks,

we recently upgraded from NW750 SP07 to NW750 SP13 (EHP8) and fairly quickly noticed a difference in how versions of workbench objects get displayed, namely in an ALV-grid instead of a simple list. But, what seems to have been lost along the way is the option to do a "remote comparison", a function we regularly use to make sure that a program editable in DEV has no pending changes sitting in QA from another developer.

Here is how it looked before (from a sandbox-system not yet upgraded):

And how it looks now:

The "Fetch Remote Versions" doesn't sound as if it's a replacement for the remote comparison button (and if it is, it for sure is badly named!). I already tried to find something here in SAP Community and via SAP support but wasn't lucky with the various search terms and combination of them I used (i.e. "remote comparison se38 version"). There also doesn't seem to be any help documentation readily available for the list of versions which might shed some light.

Has anybody run into this as well or knows where to find some information?

Thanks much and Cheers

Bärbel

[matt]

Did you not press the button and see what happens? It retrieves the versions from the RFC destination supplied, and then you can compare with them.

Btw - compare works great in Eclipse. You can even compare entire classes - not just methods.

[BaerbelWinkler]

Hi Matt,

thanks, so it is the "replacement button".

And yes, I did press the button but that didn't work because I ran into an error regarding the remote system:

So, before trying to get this potential authorization issue fixed by our basis team I wanted to make sure that the functionality behind that button is actually what I'm looking for. As I couldn't see what it does (and others can't see it either) I wasn't sure. And yes, I should have mentioned that in my question - the only and admittedly lame excuse I have is the cold I'm currently battling.

Cheers

Bärbel

[matt]

Well, I couldn't use on dev - same error as you. But it did work for test to dev... except for the actual comparison. When I have some time, I'll complain loudly to basis. It's slow as well.

[BaerbelWinkler]

We really need to have this working for comparisons from DEV to PROD (and sometimes QA, but not as often) as we often have more than one project and therefore developer wanting to apply changes in the same piece of code. To find out if the path to PROD is free everybody should run version comparison to spot any already applied changes which have been released from DEV but are still sittting in QA (and before you ask: we don't work with transport of copies). If the path is not clear the expectation is to either wait or to touch base with the other developer.

When I tried a comparison again today and got the error message, I checked SU53 and saw this check flagged (it also comes up in SE39):

Authorization Obj. S_ICF Authorization Check for ICF Access
Authorization Field ICF_FIELD Internet Communication Framework Areas (Types) DEST
Authorization Field ICF_VALUE Internet Communication Framework Values ADMIN

For now, I sent a request to our basis team to hopefully fix this via updating the authorizations developers need.

[matt]

Oh great! I bet they're all in a basis roles so when I request it, the numpties will reject on the ground it's not necessary for development support...

[BaerbelWinkler]

matthew.billingham

Hi Matt!

in the meantime I talked with our basis team and they had put in further restrictions as far as RFC-connections between our DEV- and QA/PROD-systems go back in April or May. But - as none of our developers mentioned anything amiss with the version-compare via SE38 or SE39 until after our systems were upgraded from NW750 SP07 to NW750 SP13 in November - I have a hunch that this upgrade introduced some SAP-code which now takes a closer look at these types of restrictions.

The most likely solution will be to define some additional RFC-connections which we can then use for the version comparison as long as we have the required auths in PROD (little tidbit on the side: to show up in the version compare via SE38 the RFC-connection has to be defined with translations into possible logon-languages. If the translation is missing, the connection doesn't show up in the selection-list. In SE39 this doesn't seem to be an issue, the connections get shown regardless of logon-language).

[claudia_keil]

You will have solved this already, Bärbel, but for the benefit of anyone still experiencing this - there's SAP Note 2745767 that re-instates the selection of remote comparison to "Target System".