Beta testing

[Former Member]

Hi I raised this in the feedback page but nobody from SAP seemed bothered to reply to me so I will raise it here also.

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Being a beta tester of software for other clients I wondered if it is possible that we can have access to the beta releases of the SAP GUI, especially relevant to me is the SAPGUI for Java.

From working with the Java GUI for the last year it has become apparent that release cycles for this product are every quarter and therefore any bugs raised and fixed do not get released to the customer in frequent updates.

How about we set up a subsription service asking people to beta test this software before it is publicily released to customers, releasing either nightly build or incremental builds which we can test and raise error/inadequacies against. We can the report any errors back to the subscription list , ensuring that every developer/tester receives a copy of the error and then the bug could be fixed for a future nightly/incremental build. When we the testers (and SAP of course) are happy with the build then it could be released to the customers.

In this way everybody is happy as SAP get to release software onto SAPnet which has been tested by real users, and the developers who are using the software win because the bugs or restrictions with the software are quickly fixed and made available, and on top of this we are not overloading OSS by raising messages which take weeks to be processed.

An example of this is release 630r2 of SAPGUI for Java which was released to customers with the ABAP editor only displaying proportional fonts. This made it impossible to develop any code in the editor which could be read in SAPGUI for windows. This rendered the GUI useless to any developers. It then took SAP two weeks to reply to the OSS message raised, and only under duress did they release 630r3, and then they placed it in a private area which only I could access, even though I stressed we should fix this as soon as possible and place a fix on the website so that other customers were not inconvenienced. Even today the old version of the GUI (630r2) is on the website. Nothing against the developers as they always do a great job of fixing the bugs, its just the process!

I think that lots of these outlying technologies (SAP connectors, Guis etc) which are not direclty related to SAP modules should appear on the SAP developer network with the option of downloading and testing beta builds rather than going through OSS, especially as there does not seem to be any way of raising OSS notes against the Mini Basis or mini WAS installations as you cant't raise a call without a customer number....bizarre...

All of this sounds like a win-win situation for everyone.

Regards

Edward Mellodew

[former_member374]

Hi Edward,

Thank you for your suggestion.

Sorry that you did not hear back from us via the feedback channel. We usually are quite responsive there.

What you are suggesting, which to me sounds quite reasonable, would need some major changes in how SAP does testing and releasing of our products.

Therefore it takes some time to come to an agreement and then to implement the changes that people agreed upon.

So please be patent with us. We will keep you posted.

All the best, Mark.