Understand and Adopt changes made in SAP standard during Ehp upgrades/ Migrations / Conversions

[HansRaj]

This blog will help you to adopt changes made in SAP standards to help customers make the simplified transition to newer technologies. e.g. During Ehp upgrade, SOH migration, or S4H conversion.

Are you on ECC system and looking for?

• SAP Ehp Upgrade or
• Suit on HANA Migration or
• S4H Conversion

Then what is the impact on standard modified objects during upgrade, Migration, S4H Conversion?

• Customization or
• Modification or
• Enhancement

What are the remediations, adaptation required as a pre or post activities?

Approach / Recommendation to adopt the existing modification as well as changes proposed by the new version

How to avoid the modifications and use of SAP Enhancement Technology? How to reduce the scope of technical modifications in a customer landscape?

Benefits / Best Practices

Then all questions are answered in this blog.

SAP customers running on ECC 6.0 systems streamlined their business processes by making changes to the SAP standard system objects by customization, modification, or enhancements due to the unavailability of standard functionality and these changes need to be carried forward and to be adjusted.

Eg. SAP standard tables are having custom fields enhanced by either customer include or modified directly using the SAP access key

To keep the SAP Systems up to date it is therefore recommended to adopt the old customizations, enhancement, modification done during their transformation to the new system.

When making changes to the SAP standard, the first step determines which type of change best suits your needs. There are several ways of how you can change the behavior of the standard system:

• Customizing & Configuration
  • Involves setting systems business parameters using special customizing transaction. Customizing is mandatory before using SAP system in a live environment
  • Personalization & Adaptions
• Enhancements & Extension & Integration
  • Customer changes to SAP repository objects without the need for modifications
• Modification

Customer-specific changes to SAP repository objects. When SAP objects are changed, the customer version has to be modified to match the new version

Customer Developments & Compositions - Creation of customer-specific objects according to naming conventions Customizing, Personalization, and Enhancements are features to implement changes on the SAP standard getting the full support of SAP tools.

Modifications and Custom Development are changes in the SAP standard with minimal SAP tool support. This minimal tool support leads to higher costs for maintenance and may be a deterrent for technological changes.

A successful assessment of the preparation phase is to identify/analyze the scope of changes done into the SAP standard system, how to adopt changes, its remediation to be done.

Are you on the ECC system and looking for?

• SAP Ehp Upgrade or
• Suit on HANA Migration or
• S4H Conversion

To answer this question Let us Understand SAP Modification first

Figure 1 –Difference Modification, Enhancement, Customer Development

Classification of Modification

The term "modification" is technically based and represents the behavior that these technical changes are not done in its source system.

The Modification browser or any other tools displaying modifications have a very rough filter. The main SAP table that logs modifications is called SMODILOG. This table represents a data log and should not be assumed is the final relevant modification list. However, it is very important to understand how different types of modifications exist in a system.

Below are some of the common classification possibilities of modifications.

Type 1: Cross transport modifications

If you import a cross transport/transport of copies the value will be the original foreign system id. Such elements always lead to a kind of technical modification

Type 2: Modifications in NON SAP namespaces (Customers/Partner)

These modifications are also based on cross transports, but also might belong to imported partner Or

Customer solutions.

Type 3: SAP notes

Manual activities are required while implementing notes.

Type 4: Application-specific modification

Several SAP applications will generate objects which lead to specific modification log entries.

Type 5: User Exit modification

A classic old user exit represents a simple subroutine with a special name and is linked with approval from SAP to include specific coding. The modification adaption process (SPAU) will not overwrite these special code positions.

Type 6: Migration related modifications

With SAP technology advancing with concepts like Enhancements, some old techniques used to like classic BAdi's must also be migrated to new kernel-based BAdi's to make use of the new powerful features. However, the migration process leads to the object being modified.

Type 7: Real modifications

The Modifications that are performed to address the functional gap from a business point of view.

To make such modifications, customers have to undergo an SSCR (SAP Software Change Registration) procedure. There are numerous benefits to using this procedure.

• Quick error recovery and therefore high availability of modified systems

All changed objects are logged by SAP. Based on this information, SAP employees in Regional Support can localize and eliminate potential error causes very quickly.

• Reliable operation

The probability of unintentional modifications is reduced by requiring registration.

• Simplification of the upgrades

Upgrades and release upgrades are made significantly easier due to the low number of modifications.

All of these modifications impact SAP systems. Let us understand Modification Optimization Strategy / SPDD or SPAU or SPAU_ENH Guidelines

Figure 2 –SPDD / SPAU impact by object type

AS ABAP 7.50 - New Design -SPDD and SPAU

Figure 3 –Modification Criteria that need adjustment

Figure 4 –Modification Criteria as per TR

• All modified standard SAP objects are displayed for adjustment in transaction SPDD or SPAU or SPAU_ENH. Objects that SAP no longer delivers are deleted. If you want to keep these objects, you have to accept the modifications in transaction SPDD or SPAU.
• SPDD modification covers objects from ABAP Dictionary like Tables, Data Element, Domain, etc.
• SPAU modification covers objects from programs, screen and so on
• SPAU_ENH Transaction adjust enhancements post transaction SPDD or SPAU activities completed
• Make sure that before the update there is at least one package in the customer namespace (Z*). You need this package if you have to create objects during the modification adjustment, for example, for an append structure for customer fields of an SAP table. You cannot create packages during the update
• If ABAP Dictionary objects are not manually re-created during SPDD, data loss may occur. For example, this can happen if a structure is used as a table append. You may encounter such a situation, for example, if you have implemented larger legal changes, such as Goods and Services Tax in India.

So we have understood system modification, remediation approach in detail till now let us start working on the actual project scenario. ABAP point of view what are the steps required to perform.

In the project preparation phase let us do the SPDD / SPAU assessment to identify the SAP standard modified objects impacted and Plan for its remediation during conversion

So we are in Pre-Processing Phase of S4H Conversion / Upgrade / Migration –SPDD /SPAU assessment Phase

Review the standard changed objects which get impacted during update/upgrade required to plan its remediation, its overall testing effort well in advance to minimize SUM runtime, and helping to gain speed of conversion/system upgrade / migration.

Start with Preparing impacted standard changed objects list to be adopted 

The table below gives a step-by-step general technical approach to identify modifications using different filters.

Note: If the tool or transaction CCAPPS is used, then steps 1-5 are performed automatically

Tools used in the analysis:

• /SDF/CMO_MODI_REP_2010: ST-PI function module reading SMODILOG. Also, the master function module for CCM data in Solution Manager
• Table: I_SMODILOG_REASON: complete SMODILOG extract with extra column “REASON” to classify modification.

Note: namespace, modification request text missing, application component, package info etc. missing in the result output.

Exclude objects in Non-SAP namespace

• From the list of above modification results, exclude entries occurs from customer namespace
  •  (Starts with Z*or Y* or another custom namespace other than Z* or Y*)
• Secondary table indexes: smodilog-obj_type = TABL, sub_type = INDX and index name (2nd half of sub_name starting at CHAR 31) begins with Z* or Y*

Sample List to get Custom Name Space: Select Namespace with Role = 'P'

Use TABLE – TRNSPACET to get customer namespace

Use Table TABLE - TDEVC to get development class and check its naming conventions

Input – As per Customer Name Space get Custom Development Class

Custom Development Class

 

If the application CCAPPS is used, this tool provides flexibility to selects modifications from SAP namespace only.

After completing that above exercise, we got the final list and prepared summary e.g.

Object Type wise Description and Count of Total SAP Object changed – Real Scenario

Now, what is the impact on standard objects during upgrade, Migration, S4H Conversion?

Based upon upgrade/conversion or upgrade the following factor needs to be considered

1. In the case of Upgrade Project
   • The only customer modified old to change and SAP provided new change needs to be adjusted
2. In the case of HANA DB Migration
   • Customer modified old change and SAP provided new change needs to be adjusted
   • Old SAP standard object modified by customers having violations due to HANA DB. These violations can be captured by running
     • Transaction ATC with FUNCTIONAL_DB, PERFORMANCE_DB and
   • Based upon modification and violations in those standard objects change if required to be retained need to estimate for its remediation and testing effort eg. Implicit enhancement needs custom code adaptation as per HANA Database
3. In the case of S4H Conversion
   • Apart from the above impact due to HANA DB Migration following are the points to be considered
     • Old SAP standard object modified by a customer having violations due to S4HANA needs to be remediated. These violations can be captured by running
       • Transaction SYCM for customer Custom Inventory against simplification DB
     •  Based upon modification and violations in those standard objects change if required to be retained need to estimate for its remediation and testing effort eg. Implicit enhancement needs custom code adaptation as per S4HANA architecture
4. If Modification is not adopted during System build using SPDD/ SPAU/SPAU_ENH well then
   • There will be loss of data due to loss of tables fields bypassing SPDD activity
   • There will be loss of custom functionality due to bypassing SPAU / SPAU_ENH and resulting deletion of code.

How to avoid the modifications and use of SAP Enhancement Technology? How to reduce the scope of technical modifications in a customer landscape?

Once the list of baseline modification is ready, the next step is to work on the list to reset or enhance the modifications to reduce the modification footprints in the system.

Modifications that fall in the below-mentioned categories are candidates for RESET.

• Modified Object is Identical with the last SAP Version
• Modified Object is Identical with the target SAP Version

In addition to reset possibilities mentioned above, also find out a list of Modifications which has potential for enhancements.

Below mentioned are some possibilities of converting modifications into enhancements.

• Kernel-based BAdI's and Classic BAdI's
• Class/Method Enhancements: Modification code is at the beginning-end so can be part of the Pre-Post Method.
• Function Group Enhancements
• Customer Exits
• Business Transaction Events (BTE)
• User Exit
• Source Code Enhancement: Implicit/Explicit Enhancements
• Menu-Exits, Field-Exits, Screen-Exits, and Append Structures
• Explicit source code enhancements
• Implicit source code enhancements

The new Enhancement Framework is to make modification-free enhancements of development objects such as programs, function modules, global classes. All these technologies and the new kernel-based BAdI are now integrated into one framework.

What are the remediations, adaptation required during?

To answer this lets us understand what the guidelines are to be followed

Approach / Recommendation to adopt the existing modification as well as changes proposed by the new version

• Go through with Each TAB objects in SPDD / SPAU / SPAU-ENH
• Download complete SPDD/ SPAU/SPAU-ENH log in Excel and Prepare its Action
• Based Upon Guidelines mention above adopt the changes, Analyze the changes by comparing version and propose its action to be done in excel
• If required involve functional team for the action to be performed
• Get it reviewed by SME if required in case of SPDD is performed the first time
• After the review is complete with New Action to be performed, Start the Action to be performed.
• Keep a track of the activities done

Build Phase

Run Transaction SPDD – Overview

Options to adopt Standard Changes are

• Notes
• With Assistant
• Without Assistance
• Deletions

Available Actions

• Reset - Latest Version
• Adjust -Mix of latest as well as Old Changes
  • Adjust with Proposal – Recommendation
  • Adjust Manually – Manual
• Change Processing Status – Some time change in status is required manually
• Mark for Testing – To keep a track of objects to be tested
• Delete Modification Log
• Retrieve Last Version

Run Transaction SPAU - Overview

Options to adopt Standard Changes are

• Notes
• With Assistant
• Without Assistance

Available Actions

• Confirm Obsolete SAP Note
• Reimplement
• Reset
• Adjust -Mix of latest as well as Old Changes
  • Adjust with Proposal – Recommendation
  • Adjust Manually – Manual
• Change Processing Status – Some time change in status is required manually
• Mark for Testing – To keep a track of objects to be tested
• Delete Complete Entries

Run Transaction SPAU_ENH (with Net Weaver 7.0.) – Overview

• Adjust enhancements if the underlying SAP development objects were deleted or changed in an incompatible way.
• Adjust objects If you have implemented enhancement framework options of the new enhancement framework or implemented a new kernel-based Badi and the underlying development objects have changed in an incompatible way.
• The enhancement framework does not support enhancement definitions or enhancement implementations. In some cases, you can, however, replace enhancement implementations of a higher layer with your enhancement implementations

ACTIONS to be Performed

• Automatic adjustment – No Changes are required
• Tool Supported adjustment – adopt the changes as per tool recommendation
• Manual adjustment – Adopt the changes manually - Object Marked for deletion needs to be adopted by re-implementing enhancement in case of use
• Semantic change – Adopt the changes as per semantic

Benefits/ best practices

• Synchronization across the landscape - DEV-QAS-PRD
• Synchronization of BAU & Project Landscape
• Compare version with Production with source system and restore production version
• Benefits you gain time during the critical activities
• Execution - All changes to be done on DEV and separate TRs to be used for SPAU & SPDD. Only single 
• Separate TR for SPDD and SPAU
• No direct adjustments in QAS & PRD
• Only delta changes which should be very minimal
• Freeze Changes in BAU landscape - Priority issue cannot wait if there are changes to BAU landscape - Adjust on DEV, move to QUA and PRD
• To decide what action to be taken - Involve a functional team.
• Speed up RUN time of SUM Phase by early identification of identifying modifications applicable to be adopted during update/upgrade.