Software Configuration and Change Management for ABAP

[Former Member]

Hi all,

we developed an ABAP application with about 10 developers and shipped it to Customer A.

Then we do corrections and enhancements for a new Customer B. But then Customer A finds bugs in his shipped version, which is not the current version on our development system.

Now a lot of time is wasted debugging the current version and finding out why the bug is there in the shipped version A but not in the current version.

So its difficult and timeconsuming to manage those different versions of the same application for different customers.

This effort increases with each new customer dramatically.

The ABAP workbench only knows linear versioning of single ABAP objects like report, function module or class.

Now the question:

Is there a standard transaction or external ABAP software that supports such a Software Configuration & Change Managment, i.e. allows tagging, branching, maintaining multiple development branches, allows running transactions and reports of older revisions, etc. like so many non-SAP/ABAP SCCMs like CVS, Bitkeeper, Subversion or Monotone do in the OpenSource world?

I found one called Conigma from Galileo Group, but am wondering if there are others, or whether there is someone having used such a tool.

[Former Member]

Hi Frank,

In ABAP world, there is supposed to be one development environment for one production system.

The transport of changes follow the path

DEV --> QAS --> Production.

One golden rule is while making any changes to a program in Development, ensure that the version is compatible with production and QAS.

If there is a change request already open for the development object then that earlier change request should be finished first and the changes should get transported to QAS and production.

It seems you are trying to handle two production systems using one development system. That will surely bring some serious fun

Though, if you have no other option then keep the record of versions applicable to your different customers.

Later retrieve the version according to the customer before making any changes.

Cheers,

Ram

[Former Member]

Hi Ram,

well, the 3-stage development path is what we do, too.

But the "one development environment for one production system" is only good for situations, where a development / correction system per release can be maintained (e.g. P2E for mySAP PLM 2.0, P3E for ERP2004, etc) and corrections are ported around with the correction workbench (/nSCWB).

For example in SAP standard development.

But from the ISV view it is not so affordable to setup a whole new development and QA system for each release version (since each system and even each system client does cost licences).

Having this in one system would be much more friendly.

Maybe the licence part is the reason, why SAP hasnt implemented a more sophisticated versioning system into its ABAP workbench.

At least the ABAP editor and debugger are getting revamped to the state-of-the-art features nowadays.

Maybe someone has experience in such an ISV development? Currently we have developped a real basic prototype that bundles and displays the versions of objects in a certain release. This helps a bit but could be better.