Client dependent/independent changes for QA clients

[Former Member]

I am currently planning testing of a new implmentation of SAP ERP, alongside our companies existing iSeries legacy systems.

We are looking at a SAP 4-tier Landscape (Dev, QA, PreProd, Prod), on which there will be 1 x Dev clients, 5 x QA clients, 1 x PreProd client and 1 x Prod. Dev, PreProd and Prod are ok, however QA is throwing up many questions which our SAP Implementation Partner is having difficulty in answering to our satisfaction.

Each QA client, will face off to a separate legacy test environment. These legacy environments are used for in-flight projects, each of which may be on a testing in a different timeline. Understanding that any changes to SAP programs are client independent, how do we handle program changes for a specific project (affecting only one QA client and one legacy test environment), from impacting all the other SAP QA clients?

With my limited SAP technical knowledge, I had assumed that any program changes would be giving a Z program name, which could be transported as client dependent objects. Is this assumption completely wrong?

Thanks

[former_member223322]

ABAP programs are client independent.

~Srini

[arindam_m]

Hi,

If it is the same Box you cannot do it as programs are client independent. But you can make different environments to achieve the same.

Cheers,

Arindam

[AbhishekGupta1]

Hi Angela,

a) As any abap program change is client independent, Z programs also will be client independent.

b) I would not suggest you to create different environments as finally you need to send them in production where they will messed up with each other as you will be having only 1 production system.

I suggest you to create Z program and for each different project (for which you are using different client) create different Z program so that even if they are client independent, they will not impact other project as they are not use in them.

I do agree, this may increase your work but your testing and end results will be great.

Regards,

Abhi

[Jelena]

Oh boy, what a valuable input from the SCN members.

Angela, all ABAP development is client independent, i.e. it applies to all the clients in the same environment (the only exception is SAP Script, but let's not complicate this). What you're referring to by 'Z program name' (it actually could also be Y, but again - let's keep it simple) are the customer's own development objects (could be reports, forms, etc.), i.e. something that your own ABAP developers wrote just for your system and that is not part of standard SAP. There could also be modifications and enhancements in the standard SAP code (e.g. user exits), which may or may not be in the customer name space (Y/Z).

In case of an ABAP program you do several "releases" by making a change and releasing the transport (this could be observed in Version Management in ABAP Editor). Sometimes it might be necessary to code for some conditions. There might also be some special tools from SAP or partners, but it depends on your specific needs and size of the team / project whether such investment would be worth it. There is really no "one size fits all" answer to this, I'm afraid.

I'd say though it's rather unusual to run an SAP implementation as several parallel projects. We did parallel testing before, but it was just with different data, not different code. To have a valid QA test you really should be testing the same system you will have in Production afterwards, shouldn't you? But I might be missing something...

Good luck!