No Linux trial versions available - webspace with many misleading/faulty links

[Former Member]

Hi,

being an experienced linux programmer, I decided to start with SAP.

Brought some books, "ABAP basic course" being one of them, where the author points out, that

it is possible to run a SAP test drive with linux at very low costs. Great.

After the usual registration, the first related pages from sdn.sap.com looked still optimistic:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/downloads?rid=/library/uuid/60d6c8b7-5d8f-2910-31bf-ebdf74fefd8b

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/webcontent/uuid/603afa05-d2a4-2a10-a0bf-c86743...

but then, none of the 7 N4S Testdrive parts are available. All of them pointing to a file, telling

one should order it from the SAP Knowledge Shop: http://www.sap.com/shop -> SAP Knowledge Shop and

search for the following material numbers:

• SAP NW2004s Testdrive MaxDB : 50077574
• SAP NW04s Testdrive Linux DB2 x86 : 50083014

Needless to say, neither there's a Knowledge Shop link in the SAP buy-now shop, nor any of the search topics

from above is available in those shops.

The nearest is this page, talking about a DVD:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/webcontent/uuid/b0448801-3905-2a10-b681-a803b2...

but again, no availibility.

The only part, I was able to locate was the 64bit version of MaxDB for linux, but without the other parts...

Of course, there's a Win trial version available, but neither I have Win7 nor Win Server 2008 system available

for my personal education needs ATM.

Being also an experienced packager (I'm building about 1500 different open source packages in openSUSE's

great build service: https://build.opensuse.org/project/subprojects?project=home%3Afrispete), I'm somewhat

puzzled about this situation. SAP, a company that is said to have about 50.000 employees, isn't capable to

provide a test drive package of their very own core product for linux, unlike stated here:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/linux?rid=/webcontent/uuid/9096f7c1-b783-2a10-fb94-a9fefb145a1a

Hereby, I'm offering my help on this topic.

Could some kind soul point me to a place where I can get a legal copy and license for a test drive for linux?

Thanks in advance,

Hans-Peter Jansen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Hans-Peter,

Is there any specific reason for using NW2004s (more popularly known as NetWeaver 7.0) based test drives, other than the fact that they are mentioned in the books you are referring to?

The current Linux Test drive seems to be based on NetWeaver 7.02 and is available as an SLES11 VMWare image at:

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/downloads?rid=/library/uuid/40cc99a8-c0d0-2e10-4d83-c5aad873599f

The page leads to a Novell/SLES download page, and the actual download seems to require an account with Novell. I'm guessing that you might already have an account there, as you're an active member of the OpenSUSE community

Hope this helps,

Ninad

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ninad,

thanks for the pointer. I was able to follow the guides and have 2 virtual machines running, one with SLES 11 based Netweaver Gateway test drive, the other with a xp instance for the SAP GUI for Windows.

Unfortunately, a number of issues arose from the NW Gateway test drive:

* it seems to be restricted for general abap development attempts (allowing GW specific projects only)

* no overall documentation is available in this setup (help menu)

* cannot create a new (test) namespace (e.g. /ZZTEST/) with se09, because a valid development license is missing

* I was able to create a simple test program with se38

* i wasn't able to create a package with se80, because it needs a requestnr

* creating a requestnr with se09 needs a valid project (HOME is not)

* unable to assign a transaction code with se80

And since my book is in germen, I need to translate everything, which is not so nice, given these issues..

I'm sorry, if these are rookie issues, I am one...

Any hints are highly appreciated.

Thanks,

Hans-Peter