Detailed checks for critical order contents
SAP system clone and copy
Such system copies, with their enormous manual effort and SAP checklists that are often hundreds of items long, must be performed before every refresh. Usually, three to four days have to be planned for this, during which the QA system - which in two-tier SAP environments is also the development system - is not available for the actual work. The delay is actually only caused by the meticulous matching of trivial things, such as directory names. Because such SAP system copies have to be created for each SAP application on the QA system and can thus quickly require dozens of system copies, they tie up a lot of resources and staff.
SAP offers its own solution for this: With the Test Data Migration Server (TDMS), individual tables can be selected and written indirectly, via a third SAP system, from the source to the target system via Remote Function Call (RFC). However, the selection of business objects is not possible in the standard system. The tables to be copied can only be determined on the basis of the date. The content restriction applies from a certain point in time. At least the SAP tool can be used to reduce the runtime of an extraction of test data compared to the system copy or client copy.
Copy only specific data
A non-production SAP system should also have the same repository status as the source system, regardless of the data transfer method chosen for the refresh. All the data that makes up an SAP system is stored in the repository. This includes, among other things, the definitions for the database fields and tables for master and transaction data.
For a long time, manual procedures dominated, supported by SAP (guidelines), in particular by predefined procedures and a large number of checklists. In many places, this was supplemented by scripts created in-house, which, however, only automated partial tasks/processes of an SAP system copy.
SAP system copy can be done easier and faster with "Shortcut for SAP Systems".
Nevertheless, the special system architecture and the peculiarities of the DB2 database integrated in the operating system, as well as the specific applications, also pose challenges for system tool developers.
As mentioned above, an SAP system copy created for updates is a special use case of homogeneous system copy.