Food for thought for another productive system: until when must the system be identical, keyword: transaction log
Conclusion
Third-party tools sometimes have a different focus than TDMS. The tools each offer a more or less generally understandable user guidance and are thus "out-of-the-box" products that do not require external consulting on implementation or application.
Preparation before system copy - All information about transport requests that should be re-imported on the target system of the system copy is evaluated and collected: Already released transport requests that have not yet landed on production. Open transport requests that should survive the system copy (maintain development status). The respective owners of the transports have the possibility to discard an obsolete development.
DB-specific methods: - for DB-homogeneous system copies - no Unicode conversion possible!
If the data stocks become obsolete, they can be updated by another system copy. From a technical point of view, such a refresh corresponds to the initial setup, including the associated costs as well as the load on the productive systems and manual rework. In addition, a refresh also interrupts all processes on the target system. If it is a development system, all newer development objects must be saved and transported back in after the copy. The version history is lost in the process.
To ensure that SAP solutions are nevertheless used optimally, decision-makers are well advised to regularly subject IT landscapes and applications to intensive testing. This helps to avoid potential errors and risks during operation, which can quickly lead to immense costs. But providing test data can also prove to be a challenge. Given the increased use of Big Data, storage space and resulting costs are constantly rising. In addition, testing is complicated by the growing complexity of applications and IT architecture. It can therefore be profitable for companies to invest in professional test data management, which offers decisive advantages.
With "Shortcut for SAP Systems" you can sustainably relieve your administrators of time-consuming routine activities of an SAP system copy.
The advantages here are: After the initial setup, data is already available, and users receive a completely identical test environment.
For appropriate and consistent testing and acceptance of changes in programs and processes, SAP recommends the "homogeneous system copy" approach to provide non-production systems with up-to-date data.