Data migration methods

[Former Member]

Hi experts. I am working on a study for a data migration project where data from multiple legacy systems would be moved into SAP. Apart from LSMW and BDC, what are the other useful methods when the data migration involves huge volumes of upload data?

[Former Member]

Hi,

You can use Bapi's as well which can be directly called from the Intermediate system.

Other option is IDocs.

Regards

Preeti

[Former Member]

HI,

To be specific LSWM is not a method of data migration.

LSMW is basically Legacy System Migration Workbench.

It makes use of 4 methods to load data.

1. Direct Input Method.

2. BDC

3. BAPI

4. IDOC

So a person can make use of any of the 4 methods to load legacy data into system.

Alternately we can also write custom Z programs which make use of any of the 4 above methods to load legacy data into SAP.

Regards,

Ankur Parab

[Former Member]

using S-Catt tool we can migrate the data to SAP.

whereever not possible to load the data using LSMW , then we go for ABAP prgrams. most of the programs availble in LSMW

if the data is huge volumes better go for LSMW BAPI or LSMW IDOC methods.....

[Former Member]

Hi,

Obviously the answer depends to a certain extent on the circumstances of your project (complexity of data, volume, etc) and on the object in question, but here are a few rules of thumb.

If you are new to this I would stay away from IDOCs and BAPIs as the set up is often a little complicated and if there are errors the problem is often not too easy to identify. And IDOC processing is not always as quick as people assume. For example, the customer master IDOC is processed in the background by a call transaction of XD01.

For you I would suggest definitely using LSMW, and where possible within LSMW use the standard uploads. There will be situations where the standard upload does not cover everything (again using customers as an example, it will not include the extended address data or the long texts) but I would still use the standard upload to load as much as you can, and then write a couple of simple update BDC recordings (XD02, XK02, etc) to add what's missing.

Some examples of the standard upload programs are:

Customers - RFBIDE00

Vendors - RFBIKE00

Materials - RMDATIND

All finance transactions - RFBIBL00

Fixed assets - RAALTD01

The standard uploads are normally well documented; they often use BDC (not RMDATIND) so are quite transparent; and they are generally pretty flexible.

There are a few standard uploads which are not so good, such as the sales order load, and to a lesser extent the purchase order load. In these cases you might need to look at using the BAPIs but get help from someone who has used them before.

You might want to use recordings for very simple loads like bank master.

If migrating SAP to SAP, where possible you would look to transfer master data via ALE using IDOCs. But again you need to know what you are doing and it sounds like you are moving from a non-SAP to a SAP system anyway.

Good luck,

Ben

http://www.harlex-ltd.com

[Former Member]

My recomandation is IDos. You have everythig packed very fast. If you need to change (convert) data you can use ABAP or some integrated filters ... but ABAP is the best

[Former Member]

Hi Ben,

I am in a situation that migration from SAP 4.6C to ECC6.0 We have selected to re-implementation method due to a few corprate mergers to have the same business processes. In addition, we have to do data mapping from various structure of master data into the new ones, along with transaction data. In order to have fastest data migration, will IDOC fit my requirement? I heard that SAP provides ADM tool. Is it faster in term of implementation and processing time?

Appreciate for your kind response.

pornthep

[Former Member]

Hi Pornthep,

For SAP-SAP customer master migration, unless you need to make major changes to the data, I would recommend setting up an RFC between the two systems and using ALE and IDOCs to migrate your data. Within the ALE customising you can make changes to the IDOC data, which allows for data translations, or filtering by company code, etc.

Ben

http://www.harlex-ltd.com

[nagarajan_ramudu]

Hi,

Did you get good information on data migration? Is there a simple way to extract the data from source SAP system? (and after data changes load into target system).

[Former Member]

Hi Nagarajan,

If you chose to use the ALE method of transferring data from one SAP system to another, SAP provides a number of transactions which allow you to send the data from the source system to the target. Look at the BD* transactions, for example BD10 (Send material master).

Ben

http://www.harlex-ltd.com

[Former Member]

Hi, I'm also in a similar project where the requirement is to migrate master and transaction data from SAP to SAP systems. There are plenty of standard transactions to send master data but very few for transaction data. Do we have to write our own abap code to extract transaction data and create idocs for them? Thanks.

[Former Member]

Hi Chocka,

Yes the simplest method for SAP-SAP transactional data migration is probably just to write ABAP programs to extract the data and LSMW programs to upload. Those LSMWs do not necessarily have to use IDOCs. For example, for all your FI transactional data you might be better off using the SAP standard load program RFBIBL00 via LSMW.

Ben

http://www.harlex-ltd.com