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BorisZarske
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Software Life-Cycle Management is an IT scenario of SAP NetWeaver. It belongs to the IT practice Unified Life-Cycle Management. With SAP NetWeaver 2004s, we provide a huge amount of new capabilities that will make your life easier if you deal with software life-cycle tasks in your system landscape.

For a short overview of new features in the area of Software Life-Cycle Management with SAP NetWeaver 2004s, see this presentation available on SAP Service Marketplace at service.sap.com/slcm.

Comprehensive Guidance

Best Practices and Pre-Configured Scenarios

Profit from best practices provided in form of documentation and pre-configured scenarios that make the setup and maintenance of your system landscape easier than before.

New functions in the area of Implementation and Configuration of Business Content automate cumbersome configuration steps and, as a result, accelerate the implementation of business scenarios that require business content.

In addition, improved documentation (for example, Master Guides, installation/upgrade guides, Support Package Stack guide, target group/role-specific documentation, tool documentation) provides the information you require to understand and perform software life-cycle tasks.

Tool Support for Landscape Planning and Visualization

Thorough planning should be the basis for every software life-cycle task you want to perform. Depending on your system landscape, this can be a quite complex task as you have to take care for all kind of interdependencies (for example, on software level, release level, or process level) and possible consequences also for existing functions you do not intend to change. In order to simplify the planning of software life-cycle tasks and automatically base this planning on consistent data, you can use software lifecycle manager of SAP NetWeaver. It provides comprehensive guidance as you plan software life-cycle tasks in your landscape with tool support. Software lifecycle manager can validate planned changes based on information of your system landscape. SAP NetWeaver 2004s is the first product version that includes software lifecycle manager from start.

The basis for this tool support for landscape planning is the data stored in our central information provider, the system landscape directory of SAP NetWeaver. Here you can manage data of your system landscape easier with SAP NetWeaver 2004s. For this, we provide data supplier capabilities that make it possible to automatically gather and update information also from non-ABAP and non-Java systems, such as Search and Classification (TREX). By providing the possibility to create system groups and sub-landscapes, you can also handle especially large landscapes easier than before.

Easy Implementation

For more information about new features and functions in the implementation area with SAP NetWeaver 2004s SR1, see the corresponding technical article available in SDN.

Simplified Installation Process with Reduced Number of Manual Preparation and Installation Steps

To simplify the installation process, we included a prerequisite checker into the SAP installation tool. It automatically checks whether the minimum technical installation prerequisites are fulfilled before starting the actual installation. For example, the installation tool checks if the installation host has enough RAM and swap space, and if the required kernel parameters are set correctly.

To make the dialog phase of the installation faster, we provide a standard installation mode with default values for most of the installation parameters. Also, we further enhanced the tool help (F1) and the overall handling of the installation tool itself and of the installation procedure.

For specific use cases, SAP NetWeaver Rapid Installer offers an easy, fast, wizard-based installation and configuration. It complements the installation services offered by our standard installation tool SAPinst.

Simplified, Faster, and Less Error-Prone Configuration

Central Technical Configuration (Template Installer), new with SAP NetWeaver 2004s, is a central, uniform and simple configuration tool that provides automated configuration based on templates for SAP NetWeaver usage types. The configuration procedure is accelerated, simplified, and less error-prone.

Faster and Easier Upgrade Procedure

SAP’s upgrade technology is based on long years of experience of building robust and fast upgrade routines that minimize the production system outages. Our reliable and easy-to-use upgrade process lowers the overall risk of your upgrade project. It preserves the investment of all your customer individual adaptations to SAP standard processes while equipping your business processes with new functions.

Enhanced Coverage + Improved Procedure for System Copy and Migration

With SAP NetWeaver 2004s, you can copy systems with any SAP NetWeaver usage type. Support for database-specific copy procedures and the integration of advanced options into the standard copy procedure gives you more flexibility when building your system landscape or migrating your systems to another platform.

Central Administration



Single Point of Control

Use SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure for a central software change management that covers the whole software life-cycle. You can centrally manage and guide each developer and profit from a consistent deployment and propagation of your changes.

System landscape directory (mentioned above) acts as the central information provider in your system landscape. For a central planning and validation of software life-cycle tasks, you can use software lifecycle manager (mentioned above).

High Availability Setups Supported by SAP Installation Tool

You can use our installation tool to install the high availability setups that are recommended by SAP.

Up-to-Date Processes

Ongoing Improvements to Adjust Your Business and IT Processes

SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure empowers an ESA-based application development. It guarantees processes from product definition to delivery and maintenance and enables fast adaptation and creation of applications in your landscape. With SAP NetWeaver 2004s, we provide ongoing improvements (for example, in terms of usability, stability, and performance) and a simplified installation procedure for SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure.

Maintain Your Software Safer and Easier

In your system landscape, you regularly face the requirement to apply fixes and software optimizations to keep it running smoothly. With SAP NetWeaver 2004s, we offer a unified patch implementation tool, the Java Support Package Manager (JSPM). JSPM is our standard tool for the patching of all SAP Java components (for example, in the areas of SAP NetWeaver and mySAP Business Suite). It reduces the runtime and downtime and helps to prevent system damage during the patch procedure.

To plan and validate patch processes in your system landscape, you can use software lifecycle manager of SAP NetWeaver.

Further capabilities are provided for our reliable Note Assistant and in the area of high availability support for patching.