SAP NW 7.3 Portal Upgrade Approach
Hello guys, today I am writing on the NW 7.3 Portal upgrade and its approach which I used for one of the client. I have divided the NW 7.3 upgrade approach into three steps.
- Things which needs to be considered Before Upgrade
- Things which needs to be done during an upgrade
- Post upgrade activities
Before Upgrade
Run the UDA tool. (Upgrade Dependence Analyzer) - Upgrade dependency analyzer is used to check the existence of upgrade dependencies between two separately installed SAP systems
http://service.sap.com/uda
Check for PAM (Product availability matrix)
http://service.sap.com/PAM
Check for the latest available support pack and patch versions for different Portal components.
Check for the NW 7.3 Master/Central SAP Note and known issue SAP Notes.
SAP Note: 1530174, 1407532
http://service.sap.com/notes
Check for the std. tool provided by SAP called as SAP-JUP (SAP Java Upgrade Tool).
During Upgrade
How is upgrade performed?
There is a std. tool provided by SAP called as SAP-JUP (SAP Java Upgrade Tool).
Initialization – Upgrade process starts with initialization of upgrade
- Extraction, Configuration and Checks – Extraction of required software components and necessary system level checks.
Pre-process - During the pre-process a tool called as Migration Controller creates a shadow system which is a replica of your existing production system it performs all upgrade related operations on shadow system while your production system continues to serve.
Downtime - Once all operations related to upgrade such as upgrade of software components, new installations etc. are done, it performs a schema switch.
Upgrade/migrate availability table for NW 7.30
As you can see, if you’ve webDynpro Java developments are on any of the 6.40 or 7.0 versions, you have to migrate them to 7.30 manually.
We have to use the NWDS 7.3 for code migration.
NWDS detects that development is not from 7.3 platforms and asks you if it should migrate the contents.
* This process only supports DC components. If you’ve a local development then you’ve to convert it to DC.
Analyze the impact of an upgrade on the existing functionality and all the deployed business PKG in a landscape.
Check if SAP is providing any mechanism to migrate the custom code.
In the current SAP NetWeaver version, PAR (Portal Application Archive) files are no longer supported. When upgrading portal applications from SAP NetWeaver 7.0 to the current version, you need to migrate any PAR files to WAR files packaged in EAR files.
For ESS/MSS or Custom development SAP is providing the NW 7.3 NWDS version where code needs to migrate based on new Java version.
Using the PAR Migration Tool
In the current SAP NetWeaver version, PAR (Portal Application Archive) files are no longer supported.
The import process cannot import PAR files, or SDA and SCA files containing PAR files, because PAR files are no longer supported.
When upgrading portal applications from SAP NetWeaver 7.0 to the current version, you need to migrate any PAR files to WAR files packaged in EAR files.
The PAR Migration Tool is a wizard that enables you to migrate standalone PAR files, as well as PAR files contained in SDA or SCA files, to the supported file formats.
System Administration ->Support -> Choose PAR Migration Tool.
The PAR Migration Tool wizard enables you to view these files, so that you can select them and migrate them to a supported format.
ESS/MSS/Custom code Migration–
SAP provides Business Packages for the backend releases Business Suite 7 (e.g. ECC 6.0 EhP4, SRM 7.0, etc.) and Business Suite 7 Innovations 2010 (e.g. ECC 6.0 EhP5; SRM 7.0 EhP1, etc.) on SAP NetWeaver Portal 7.3. Customers running an older SAP ERP release (e.g. ECC 6.0 EhP3 or below) may manually integrate their ABAP transactions via AppIntegrator or need to upgrade to the supported release level.
For ESS/MSS Business PKG with EHP5, SAP gives three options:
1. ESS/MSS Java version - Upgrade to latest ESS/MSS business PKG version.
2. Partial Java and Partial ABAP - Upgrade to latest Java version and install ABAP ESS/MSS business pkg.
3. Upgrade to ABAP ESS/MSS business pkg.
Especially Java-based business packages had to be adjusted to the new runtime environment (Java EE5) of the portal server.
NWDI & NWDS
As mentioned earlier we have to use the NW 7.3 NWDS for code migration while using NW 7.3.
Code/project has to re-compile and re-deploy.
We don’t really have to upgrade NWDI server to support 7.3 developments. But SAP suggests maintaining all the landscape on the same NW version.
NWDI tracks needs to upgrade to latest business PKG versions.
Make sure that we are using required dependencies and used SDK is J2EE 1.4 as NW 7.3 supports both J2EE 1.4 and Java EE 5
Theme configuration on a Portal and all ABAP systems
Changes in Java base will affect the java scripts and theme related configurations
SPRO Configurations - Changes with business PKG will affect the SPRO configurations which we need to revisit to make sure the applications are working fine.
OBN Configurations - Validate OBN related configurations
KM Configuration - Validate all KM related configurations
Post Upgrade
Explore new features and functionalities
Complete analysis for new functionality and work with Business/Process team to identify the new scope.
Implement new features and functionalities
Maintenance and go-live support activities
Some Highlights
- Visual Administrator is no more available
- Role and permission granularity introduced with READONLY & SUPERADMIN actions for all std. application services. This includes JCo, Log Viewer, and Guided Procedures etc.
- You cannot create local dictionary projects anymore
- No create archive option available for DC
- A lot of changes in WDJ Framework
- WebDynpro Console no more available in System Administration
- Support Desk no more available in System Administration
- WebDynpro Content Administrator no more available in Content Administration
- Portal Display is moved from System Administration to Content Administration
- Portal Wiki is now available
- Site-map of ALL application in PCD is available for that you can quickly search the required iView or Workset
- You no more need to edit masthead PAR to change the function link URLs. You can easily change Help URL to custom help resource
