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Former Member

SAP Netweaver Gateway was installed in our demo system at a very early stage. We maintained it until Gateway 2.0 Service Pack 2. Thereafter we didn’t maintain it. So it was time to upgrade our system to the latest service pack.  When I intended to start the upgrade this was service pack 6, while encountering some time issues and not progressing the upgrade, service pack 7 was released.

I am not a SAP basis consultant but I intended to upgrade the system. As I roughly could remember the steps to take when upgrading a system I was confident to do so. To be sure I went to Google and searched for ‘How to upgrade SAP Gateway’. This was leading me to some interesting links, as you might have experienced by Googling it yourself right now, but I couldn’t find a fully detailed guide which comprises each step. That’s why you’re able to read this blog right now.

1. Download software packages

The first step when upgrading SAP software is to download the software upgrade packages from the download area within service.sap.com (Software Downloads-> Installations and Upgrades -> A-Z Index -> SAP Netweaver Gateway). This software must be downloaded with the SAP Download Manager.

2. Extract software packages with SAPCAR

The downloaded files have to be extracted, it are compressed files, with the SAPCAR tool which can be downloaded from service.sap.com(Software Downloads-> Support packages and patches -> Search for Support Packages and Patches -> sapcar).  The downloaded .SAR files are then extracted and this results in .PAT files that are needed by the SAP software. To extract the files you need to work with the Command Prompt and the commands which you might need are explained in the following blog: http://www.easymarketplace.de/SAPCAR.php#OnlineHelp. You can either extract the files in the folder on the server which is defined as the import folder for Upgrade files or you can just save them in a folder you can remember;)

3. Load software into SAP

The extracted files can now be imported with the upload function of the transaction SPAM.  First you have to be sure you have the most current version of SPAM. You can check this by selecting ‘Import SPAM/SAINT Update’. It is advised by SAP to always update SPAM/SAINT before upgrading your system.

To upload the downloaded and extracted files go to Support Package -> Load packages. There you select the folder you want to upload from. The dedicated folder for uploading packages (‘From Application Server’) or you select the extracted .PAT files from the front-end (‘From Front End’).

Performing this action, uploads the upgrade files into the SAP system.

4. Checking prerequisites and define queue

The next step is transaction SPAM. The files you have just uploaded are now sorted per software component and the transaction checks all prerequisites that have to be met when performing the upgrade. This can be viewed by pressing ‘New Support Packages’.

If all prerequisites are met, the queue can be defined. Select one service pack and then ‘Define queue’. Software packages that have to be imported as prerequisite for the one you selected will be first in the queue. In this way all necessary imports are placed in the right order to upgrade your software package. In the background your ABAP transports are being prepared and placed in the correct order.

5. Import and confirm queue

The transports will be executed after defining the queue and actually perform your upgrade by selecting ‘Import queue’.

When the upgrade is started you will be prompted a choice to use the Modification assistant. This will track the changes you made to objects the same objects are modified by the upgrade software. You can choose to keep your own changes to the objects or keep the version has proposed with the software update. These changes can be handled with the transactions SPDD en SPAU. For an overview of how to handle these transactions, see the next link:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/709abcf3-7d77-2c10-8d86-b9d2cb01c...

The last step in the SPAM transaction is to ‘Confirm queue’. The result is that after confirming the queue you can start the update of another software component,

After having imported all packages you want, you can have an overview of every package that is imported. Transaction SPAM and ‘Imported Support Packages’.

6. Check existing scenarios

Having upgraded the software components. We tested our existing Gateway services for any issues. The first times gateway services were called we did get abap dumps:

- <ERROR_INFO>

- <EXCEPTION_INFO>

<TYPE>CX_SY_REF_IS_INITIAL</TYPE>

<ERROR_TEXT>Dereferencing the NULL reference</ERROR_TEXT>

- <CX_SY_NO_HANDLER>

<CLASSNAME>CX_SY_REF_IS_INITIAL</CLASSNAME>

</CX_SY_NO_HANDLER>

</EXCEPTION_INFO>

</ERROR_INFO>

Stupid. I did forget to run the transaction SGEN. This program compiles all your new code and this is to prevent getting abap dumps as seen above.

Service pack 7 did not create any problems in our existing gateway scenarios and therefore it looks like it has perfect backwards compatibility.

Hopefully you have learned something from this blog. I did.

Best regards,

Fons

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