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Author's profile photo Roland Kramer
Roland Kramer
October 11, 2016 11 minute read

Software Logistics (SL) for SAP BW and BW/4HANA

Last Changed: 25th of January 2023

Software Logistics (SL) for SAP BW and BW/4HANA

Blog Content

 

 

More flexibility with SAP BW Post-Copy Automation

To reduce downtime for your production landscape, one of the recommended migration paths of SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) to SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA comprises a system copy of your SAP NetWeaver BW system. The system copy procedure of SAP NetWeaver BW systems and landscapes is complex for a number of reasons however. A large number of configuration settings are involved for example (such as connections and delta queue handling for data loading), as well as system copy scenarios of SAP NetWeaver BW (each with different landscape aspects) that have to be handled as part of every system copy, regardless of whether the system copy is part of the migration to SAP HANA or you want to perform regular system copies of your SAP NetWeaver BW landscape.

To achieve this, SAP NetWeaver Landscape Virtualization Management offers preconfigured “task lists” used by the ABAP task manager for lifecycle management automation.

You can also enable SAP BW powered by SAP HANA to “go productive” with parallel operation of your existing production system, both connected to the same back-end systems. This is achieved with a special and unique automated solution for delta queue cloning and synchronization on production systems.

SAP Note 886102 (SMP login required) thus becomes obsolete. Using the post-copy automation for SAP BW (BW PCA) in the migration process of SAP BW to SAP BW on SAP HANA, this process can be shortened by weeks and becomes easier, faster and more reliable.

The former presentation TechEd 2014 – Session ITM206 still illustrates the migration to SAP BW on SAP HANA from an end-to-end perspective.

SAP BW System Copy

PDF help: User Guide for SAP BW Note Analyzer
Note 2743291 – PCA for BW/4HANA
Note 2570363 – Availability of BW PCA for BW/4HANA
Note 1707321 – BW System Copy: Post Copy Automation (BW-PCA)
Note 1614266 – System Copy: Post-Copy Automation (PCA) / SAP Landscape Management (LaMa)

SAP BW 7.30  – Systemcopy ABAP => Update from January 2020

Since Release 7.30 SP05, it is now possible to perform a heterogeneous system copy (including unicode migration) to migrate existing systems based on SAP BW 7.30 SP05 and higher to SAP BW on SAP HANA (HDB) based systems.

With this major step forward, a new procedure called “Post Copy Automation (BW PCA)” now supports customers with what can often be complex post-steps before and after the homogenous/heterogeneous BW system copy. This presentation is the delta information to the existing document “SAP NetWeaver 7.30 – BW Systemcopy ABAP” shown above. The technical Improvements with the leaner data model provides advantages with BW on HANA too.

You can also refer to the SAP First Guidance Documents
– SAP First Guidance – SAP BW on HANA – Edition 2021
– SAP First Guidance – BW Housekeeping and BW-PCA

To ease this generic step of BW system copy, a new procedure called “BW Post Copy automation (BW PCA)” is available, which supports customer now in the complex pre and post steps during the homogeneous/heterogeneous SAP BW  system copy (information from the SAP ALM group) procedure.

Please note that these procedure can be used independently from your BW and Database Version starting from NetWeaver 7.0x

Blog – System Copy Automation for SAP Business Warehouse System Landscapes
Blog – New Note Analyzer for SAP BW PCA and Housekeeping
Blog – System Copy Automation for SAP Business Warehouse System Landscapes (BW PCA)

We distinguish between two use cases explained in the FAQ for BW-PCA:

  • Initial copy
    based on an existing original BW system and connected BW source systems

Task Lists – SAP_BW_COPY_INITIAL_PREPARE (SAP BW systems only)
and SAP_BW_BASIS_COPY_INITIAL_CONFIG

Note 2534288 – HEC Service “Homogeneous System Copy / System Refresh (ABAP)
Note 2681701 – System Copy: Task Content (12.1 Improvements)

  • Refresh of an existing system
    based on an existing SAP BW system and connected SAP BW source systems

Task List – SAP_BW_BASIS_COPY_REFRESH_CONFIG

Updating to the minimum level of the mentioned Support Stacks is recommended to minimize the manual effort. For both cases the BW-PCA Task lists support the customer together with the software provisioning manager 1.0 (SWPM) in these software lifecycle management tasks. BW-PCA is embedded in the SAP NetWeaver Landscape Virtualization Management

SAP BW Housekeeping Tasks

Here, you will learn about various housekeeping activities that should be part of the operational concept of your Enterprise Data Warehouse. These housekeeping activities will support you in removing unwanted and unneeded data as well as unused metadata. Scheduling these activities regularly in the system will ensure optimum utilization of system resources while at the same time increasing the overall system performance.

SAP First Guidance – SAP BW Housekeeping and BW-PCA

Note 1829728 – BW Housekeeping Task List
Note 1855296 – BW Housekeeping, Upgrade and Migration Task List Improvements 1
Note 2124850 – Class CL_RSO_DTP_ERROR_LOG_DELETE is missing Housekeeping task list
Note 2407784 – How to clean up RSBKDATA and related tables

The Housekeeping Task List (Pre/Post Steps) allows you to automate mandatory tasks prior to upgrade/migration with DMO to ensure the quality of the migration process and the health of your BW System.

Blog: Create #SAP #BW Housekeeping task list
Blog: House Keeping / Performance Tuning Activities in SAP BW Systems
Blog: SAP BW-Performance Tuning through System Tables

Event Presentations

Presentation – Hitchhiker’s Guide to NetWeaver or “thank you for the fish …” (simply timeless)

Presentation – Upgrade S/4HANA Version 2020 -Basis View

 

Additional Topics like References, Experiences, etc.

For information about lower releases, see SAP BW 7.0 and lower – exclusively.

Product Availability Matrix (PAM) for Business Warehouse Accelerator 7.20 (BWA)
Note 1845809 – Latest Revision for BWA 7.20
Note 2495501 – BWA 7.20: Revision 41
Note 2665383 – BWA 7.20: Revision 42
Note 2887737 – BWA 7.20: Revision 44 (05.02.2020)
Note 3284562 – BWA 7.20: Revision 49 (30.12.2022)

This is a collection of resources from the former SCN Network and its content is not reflecting the findings from this document of future upgrade and enhancements.

Blog – IE11 will no longer be supported by various SAP UI technologies in newer releases
Blog – SAP BW Upgrade: Pre and Post upgrade activities with answer to why?
Blog – SAP BW 7.4 Powered by HANA — Promising Features (Part 1)
Blog – ABAP CDS in SAP BW
Blog – SAP BI4.x Installation/Update/Patching
Blog – Removal of only Time Dependent Attribute added Accidentally
Blog – Some interesting Facts of Compatibility Views in SAP BW/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA – SAP Cloud Integration into SAP BW/4HANA – further Content from Frank Riesner (SAP)
Blog – How to load Flat Files from MS Office 365 to BW/4HANA using SDI / DP-Agent

DSAG Forum: “TG Road 2 BW/4HANA” => (DSAG-ID requested) share your experience with other DSAG members.


Roland Kramer, SAP Platform Architect for Intelligent Data & Analytics
@RolandKramer

 

 

“I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious.”

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      15 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great Compilation \ knowledge sharing of Upgrade Document.Thanks Roland for this Guide.

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks Roland, its very useful info.

      We are planning to upgrade our BW system from 7.4 to 7.5 on HANA. For that we are looking for general BW 7.5 upgradation Checklist like Pre-upgrade BW activity and post-upgrade BW activity. More interested in Related to BW activity not basis activity.

      Do you have any Checklist for BW activity?

      Thanks

      Ferdl

      Author's profile photo Roland Kramer
      Roland Kramer
      Blog Post Author

      You can use the ASU toolbox for this task which is mentioned in SAP Note 1000009

      Furthermore you can find additional Application Hints in the 7.50 Upgrade Presentation found above
      https://blogs.sap.com/2016/10/11/software-application-lifecycle-management-sap-bw/#bwupgrade

      Best Regards Roland

      Author's profile photo Srinu Neli
      Srinu Neli

       

      Hi Roland,

      Thank you very much for nice content,We are planning to upgrade our

      BW Upgrade 7.00 on Oracle DB to BW 7.5 Hana DB

      For that we are looking for general BW 7.5 up gradation Checklist like Pre-upgrade and post-upgrade security activities as to what data we need to take back up and More interested in security related activities, Can you please help me to get started with security activities.

      Author's profile photo Roland Kramer
      Roland Kramer
      Blog Post Author

      Hi,

      Everything is described in the Blog above

      https://blogs.sap.com/2016/10/11/software-application-lifecycle-management-sap-bw/comment-page-1/#bwupgrade and in the following SAP First Guidance

      SAP First Guidance – Using the new DMO to migrate to BW on HANA

      DMO: optimizing system downtime is timeless …

      Best Regards Roland

      Author's profile photo John Bailey
      John Bailey

       

      We are interested in deploying our existing BPC 10.1 / BW 7.4 application to Azure cloud. Noticed first guidance on SAP BW4/HANA on Azure. Is an upgrade roadmap from BPC10.1 / BW7.4 to BPC11 / BW7.5 available on Azure? Our goal on BPC11 is to go back to the embedded model.

      Author's profile photo Roland Kramer
      Roland Kramer
      Blog Post Author

      Hello John

      actually there is no Upgrade from  BPC10.1 / BW7.4 as it would be a so called "In-Place Conversion via an Upgrade to "BW on HANA 7.50".

      For the Upgrade to SAP BW 7.50 see the following Presentation

      Then you can convert to BW/4 and BPC 11.0 according to the Blog - On the Road to BW/4HANA – first stage accomplished – second stage finalized – choose your Path

      As you already mentioned the SAP First Guidance – deploy SAP BW/4HANA in the Azure Cloud
      there is no difference between the on-premise Deployment and the IaaS Deployment on Azure

      Best Regards Roland

      Author's profile photo Rui Romba
      Rui Romba

      Hello Experts,

      Finally our company decided to move our database do HANA.

       

      We are currently in SAP BW 731 and we also use BI-IP capabilities.

       

      When moving to BW on HANA the BI-IP capabilities will be affected? Do we need to activate anything to continue using BI-IP? Aditional licenses are necessary?

       

      Many thanks for your help.

       

      Best Regards,

       

      Rui

       

      Author's profile photo Roland Kramer
      Roland Kramer
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Rui

      You can still use BI-IP with BW on HANA

      With BW/4 you have to purchase the BPC Add-On to access the former BI-IP Application/Data again

      Best Regards Roland

      Author's profile photo AMIT Lal
      AMIT Lal

      Hi Roland,

      Is is possible to have S/4HANA and BW/4HANA on appliance and works for production scenario?

       

      Regards,

      Amit

       

      Author's profile photo Roland Kramer
      Roland Kramer
      Blog Post Author

      Hi

      technically yes. Furthermore I would use separate HANA Instances for S/4 and BW/4 and not a single multi-tenant instance

      best regards roland

      Author's profile photo Kirill Kiiashko
      Kirill Kiiashko

      Good day!

      Does any similar SAP_BW_HOUSEKEEPING task list exist for BW/4HANA? Only 7.5* mentioned in related notes.

      Author's profile photo david john
      david john

      Just trying to understand these terms lol. I hate programming languages

      Author's profile photo Srinivasan Kuram
      Srinivasan Kuram

      Thanks Roland, its great info and very useful information.

      My question to you and your seek your advise here is that my company has 2 ERP systems with ECC 6 EHP 6 and SP 10 and 7 respectively. Does this upgrade of our BW systems from NW7.3 to NW 7.5 has any prerequsits on the versions of my ERP systems (meaning does my ERP's also need to go through any SP level upgrade or EHP upgrade for getting my BW system upgraded to NW7.5?

      Author's profile photo Bruce Chi
      Bruce Chi

      Thank you Roland for all your useful postings.

      I wanted to ask for the remote conversion options, if all existing BW Analysis workbooks will need to be manually converted to point to the new SID after remote conversion. Hopefully there's a batch job or some conversion utility users can use to convert their existing BW Analysis workbooks over to the new SID?

      I prefer the remote conversion option assuming there's some automated or batch method to repoint existing BW Analysis workbooks over to the new SID.

      Regards,

      Bruce