Creating maintenance tracks

[michael_voss2]

Hello everybody!

After developing a WebDynpro Java Application in a single NWDI development track for some time (NW 7.3, NWDI is NW 7.0, runtime systems defined for Test, Consolidation, Test and Production), we now need to create and deploy a hotfix based on the current Production version, while we already transported some newly developed stuff to the Test compartment of this track.

After reading about maintenance tracks in and and some other locations, I came to the conclusion that we'll have to create an additional maintenance track and to create and deploy our hotfix in that track. As far as I understand the procedures, I'd have to 

• create a new NWDI track (maintenance track) with the same software component as the development track
• define runtime systems for Consolidation, Test and Production in the maintenance track using the same systems as in the development track
• remove Production runtime system from development track
• create track connection of type "Transport" from development track to maintenance track
• create track connection of type "Repair" from maintenance track to development track (optional; if ommitted, I'd have to implement the hotfix in both tracks)
• export the SCA from Production compartment of the development track
• copy this SCA into the checkin inbox folder of the maintenance track
• checkin the SCA and the required SCAs into maintenance track
• create a project for the maintenance track in NWDS
• implement hotfix, check in, activate and release in maintenance track
• transport hotfix to Consolidation compartment in maintenance track (and further on to Production)
• in further development, I'd develop in the development track, check in, activate, release, import to Consolidation, assemble, import into Test and approve the new requests. After that, they will be available for check in (?) in the maintenance track, where I'll perfrom all necessary steps up to import into Production compartment.

Can anyone confirm that the above steps are  correct and sufficient ?

Can you point me to any source that describes somewhat in detail how to import the SCA into the maintenance track and NWDS ?

Is there any other way to get the current production sourcecode into NWDS to be able to create a hotfix based on the current production version of my application ?

Do I have to undeploy the currently deployed applications from the runtime systems befroe deploying out of the maintenance track ?

Thanks in advance

Michael

[junwu · Accepted solution]

the two tracks have to connect to different runtime system.

you can manually forward the sca from dev track to maintenance track, then you can checkin them just like other SCA.

[michael_voss2 · Accepted solution]

Hello!

Thank you for your valuable hint. Could you elaborate a little on manually forwarding the sca ?

Right now, my approach would be to export the sca from the Production compartment of the development track via "Export SCA". The resulting file would then be moved to the CMS checkin folder (as defined in the domain data of the Landscape Configurator, plus "/CMS") on the file system of the CMS server and then be checked in using the "Check-In" tab of my maintenance track inside Transport Studio. After that, I'd import the track into NWDS and use ist like on any ordinary development.

Is there any drawback ? When we migrated our applications from NetWeaver 7.0 to 7.3, we did just that (except that the SCA came from our 7.0 tracks and we had no track connections) but could not change service pack number and patch level in the assembly step. On normal transports (developed in development track, checked in, ..., approved, transported to maintenance track via track connection, checked in, ..., approved there, imported into production) this might be o. k., but I think we'd like to at least change the patch level when creating a hotfix, although this would be a minor issue.

If I remember correctly, the way around that was importing the exported (7.0) sca into yet another temporary track and copying the contained development components into the new (7.3) track using NWDS. Today, I tried exporting and downloading the sca file and importing the sca directly into the "Local Development" component of NWDS, which worked fine, but I cannot copy the contained development components to another track (the "Copy" option in the context menu of the Component Browser is grayed out.

Regarding the runtime systems, I need to have at least Development and Test runtime systems defined in the development track. The transition of "non-hot fix" development to the maintenance track may only happen after approval, and it has to be tested on some system. So, I might redefine the Consolidation runtime system of my development track as the Test runtime system of my maintenance track, ending up having a development track with runtime systems defined for Development and Test and a maintenance track with runtime systems defined for Test and production. But then, I'm missing a system for the development compartment of my maintenance track. Since I do not have an option of having more than the currently available runtime systems in our landscape, as this would invole adding more database servers, ERP systems and so on, I'd be grateful for any other idea. What is the usual scenario in companies using NWDI maintenance tracks ? I remember having a problem when deploying an application having the same alias to the same runtime system from different tracks (as would be the case here, since it is the same application I'd be trying to deploy from development and maintenance track).

Thanks

Michael