Why SAP ERP 6.0 EHP6 contains SAP BASIS 7.31

Boris_Rubarth · ‎12-21-2012

ℹ Did you stumble across the fact that after installing Enhancement Package 6 for SAP ERP 6.0
(from which you know that it is based on Enhancement Package 3 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0)
the system/status information of your SAP ERP - ECC server shows components with version 7.31?
Let us have a short review on how this happened …

SAP R/3 was easy

The application and the basis components all were in one system, installed together, and they all had the same version like the product: product version SAP R/3 4.6 used software component version SAP BASIS 4.6 as well as software component versions SAP HR 4.6 and SAP APPL 4.6, see figure 1.

ℹ Only a part of all software components are shown in this and the following figures.

Nowadays it is more complex

A product like SAP ERP (successor of SAP R/3) is based on a SAP NetWeaver version, for example SAP ERP 6.0 is based on SAP NetWeaver 7.0. And both the application as well as SAP NetWeaver use enhancement packages, like Enhancement Package 04 for SAP ERP 6.0 is based on Enhancement Package 01 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0. And they are bound to each other: EHP 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 requires EHP 1 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0.

The software components seemed always to follow the numbering of the product: SAP HR 6.04 belongs to Enhancement Package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0, just like SAP BASIS 7.01 belongs to Enhancement Package 01 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0, see figure 2.

Correlating software component versions with product versions

So it seems conclusive to inspect the software component versions of an SAP system to deduce the product version. If you see SAP BASIS 7.02, you know that it is part of the Enhancement Package 2 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0. And if you see this in an SAP ERP - ECC server, you may know that it is based on Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 (if you know about the correlation of "NW 7.0 EHP2 <-> ECC 6.0 EHP5").

But then, as stated at the beginning of the blog: EHP 6 for SAP ERP 6.0 is different: the SAP ERP - ECC server is using software component versions SAP BASIS 7.31, SAP ABA 7.31 and others - instead of 7.03, as you may have expected. Indeed, these software components do not have a version 7.03! SAP has consolidated some software components, and as a result, an SAP NetWeaver 7.31 Application Server ABAP uses the same software component version SAP BASIS 7.31 as a system based on Enhancement Package 3 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0. Figure 3 shows this for some software components in a comparison for EHP6 for SAP ERP 6.0 and EHP1 for SAP BW 7.3.

Digging deeper

This discrepancy between software component version and product versions is not new: let us have a look at software component SAP HR: it does not have a version 6.05, so you may have detected this already with Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0. Figure 4 shows both EHP5 and EHP6 for SAP ERP 6.0.

Figure 4 now includes more software components - but still not all. Now when you update your SAP ERP 6.0, you may select only some of all the technical usages. If you select only these that do not require software component EA-DIMP, this software component will not be updated to the new version. That is why figure 4 shows the software component ECC-DIMP with version 6.00.

Evolution of code lines for software component SAP BASIS

Let us focus on one prominent software component of the foundation of each ABAP system: SAP BASIS. After SAP NetWeaver 7.0 was released, the code line of SAP BASIS 7.0 was split. On the one hand, this allowed faster innovation for technology solutions like SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI), based on SAP BASIS 7.1, 7.11 and above (until 7.3). At the same time, the SAP Business Suite based applications like SAP ERP had the requirement of a stable core. This lead to the code line 7.0, 7.01, and 7.02.

Meanwhile SAP has reached a high degree of interoperability between SAP Business Suite based application systems (like SAP ERP) and SAP NetWeaver based technology systems (like PI). So it was possible to merge the two code lines back into one – and this one had to be named 7.31.

ℹ Part 2 of this blog is now available: SAP versioning, part 2 (why EHP7 contains SAP APPL 6.17)
Read SAP Note 1566412 for a mapping between technical usages and software component versions for SAP ERP
Overview on SAP Business Suite releases: Confused with different SAP Business Suite Releases ?? Read it !!
Not completely up to date, but worth reading: SAP product naming confusion
Learn details about product instances and Funtionally Equivalent Instances
Understanding Landscape Descriptions – Part II: Products and Product Instances in Detail
Learn about the Software Update Manager (SUM) that replaces the Enhancement Package Installer (EhpI):
Software Update Manager (SUM): introducing the tool for software maintenance

Remarks

This blog intends to make you aware of the fact that product versions and software component versions have their own numbering - it still simplifies the picture. Figure 5 for example does only focus on the ABAP stack of SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI), although PI used to be a dual-stack, running a Java stack with java software components as well. Code line 7.20 (listed in brackets in figure 5) was only used for products based on the SAP NetWeaver Application Server Java, like Composition Environment (CE).

Regards, Boris Rubarth

[Product Management Software Logistic, SAP AG]