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upgrade impact analysis using solution manager instead of panaya tool?

former_member432274
Participant
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Hi Solution Manager Experts,

1. I just upgraded my sandbox system to the latest enhancement pack level, want to see any code changes have been made in my new enhancement system with respect to my old version? can i do it with Solution Manager?

Previously we use to work with panaya tool and find the change code analysis. Now i heard we can do the same analysis using solution manager tools.Is this correct? if Yes, will it be accurate as panaya tool?

2. can some one shed some lights on how to find the code changes of my latest patch sandbox system with compare to the old sandbox system using solution manager?

I got some links, which are old, can some one help me with any sap guide, sap blog, sap post or document that would be really helpful

Thanks in advance,

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Answers (2)

Answers (2)

TomCenens
Active Contributor
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Hi there

Sounds like I should write a new blog post to provide the community with an update, might be interesting but I would have to check with Panaya again also then since I assume they haven't been resting out either. So on Panaya side, sorry, I would have to get an update myself .

On the SAP Solution Manager side, what has changed in the meantime?

BPCA:

SAP introduced the option to generate a business blueprint based on statistical usage of the SAP system (ST03 + UPL statistics) so you can generate a business blueprint but it's based on usage, not purely on what's in your system because if you want to determine impact, you won't to determine impact that matters not just "all impact" because all impact would most likely translate into a huge (insane) list of objects that changed and then the question is what will you do with that, what's the purpose?

SAP also introduced the option to generate TBOM's (semi-dynamic option) in background which doesn't require running through each business process that is in use; So this option also lower the amount of effort needed which I mentioned in my blog post and helps to have a lower entry point to use the functionality.

Once you have the above in place you can check against transport requests, support package stacks etc to see what the impact would be. It gives you the result of which business process steps are impacted and can give you a list of objects (detailed) that are touched.

A difficulty in terms of checking against a support package stack is that it needs to have been imported (test import at minimum) ~ it's really not that end-user friendly for this purpose and for this reason (and other reasons) SAP has also released SEA (see below) which is really used for checking the impact of SPS and EHP updates etc...

You can then also call "Test Scope Optimization" which will optimize the testing efforts needed and tell you what you need to test, which processes, in order to cover all the impacted SAP objects so can you reduce testing efforts to what is needed and you wouldn't have to test everything. You can also maintain the effort needed to change things so you can get a result where BPCA tells you how much time is needed to make the necessary changes.

BPCA calculates on your SAP Solution Manager system which means that if you have large sets of changes (like a support package stack) it takes time. It works fine and pretty fast against transport milestones for example which is the main use case in which I deploy BPCA at customer side.

SEA (Scope and Effort Analyzer):

Since the blog posts that I have written on the topic, SAP has also released new functionality, Scope and Effort Analyzer which is easier to use / better than BPCA to calculate the impact of a support package stack or upgrade because it uses statistical data from your managed SAP system + it uses maintenance optimizer (or maintenance planner) data where you say "this is my target state of my system" without the need to update your system . The calculation is done on SAP side, data is sent to SAP and they give back results.

SEA gives you the needed efforts for SPAU / SPDD and tells you which custom code needs modification (is touched) due to updates of SAP standard objects. You can estimate the rework effort (SAP put in timings based on projects they have done in the past) needed and you can also optimize test scope etc like what you can do what BPCA results afterwards.

So SEA gives you the opportunity to already know the impact before you do the update of your system .

You can find information on both on SCN and SAP sources like https://service.sap.com/rkt-solman

Best regards

Tom

Matt_Fraser
Active Contributor
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Nice overview, Tom, and yeah, an updated blog post would be great! In terms of competitors out there, Panaya is no longer the only game in town, either, with tools like LiveCompare on the market as well. In the past it has always seemed that what can be achieved with these third-party tools can also be achieved with Solution Manager (without additional licensing expense), but sometimes the third-party tools are quicker and easier to setup and use, and that might be the justification for their purchase if your support team is short-staffed.

I suspect Solution Manager's offerings, and satellite offerings like SEA, are reducing this "simplicity gap" all the time, however, so what would be interesting would be to see a blog to address this. SolMan still seems to have a reputation as difficult to setup and manage, and so how much of that is left over from the old days and how much is still true?

Cheers,

Matt

Jelena
Active Contributor
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I agree, a follow-up blog would be nice. Quite a bit has changed in that area. I actually liked LiveCompare based on the short demos I've seen (if only it was free! ).

If you write on this, I'd like to include a link in my recent upgrade blog. Just let me know.

TomCenens
Active Contributor
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Hi Matt

Very general speaking, it's still complex enough that I would advice a customer to get someone on it that knows SAP Solution Manager. SAP Solution Manager is still often seen as a side kick thing of the SAP Basis team and while there are lots of prerequisites and technical aspects, SAP Solution Manager is something on it's own, you need to have sufficient knowledge on it or you'll be wasting time on it (I see this a lot in all honesty) and customers also tend to loose faith in the product itself that way. Resources try to set something up, they don't know what they are doing sometimes, it takes heaps of time and they often don't get the right end result or it already took too much time (sometimes it's them, sometimes it's just the scenario or what SAP intended and it doesn't fit the requirement).

SEA is less complex compared to BPCA so there, improvements have been made for sure. SAP has also done work on SolMan 7.2 in several area's already to move content to the SAP side of town (SAP backbone - SAP Support Portal) which is also a positive thing in my opinion because that way, the content can be updated on SAP side and available for everyone without dependencies on customer side (SAP Solution Manager).

Again, I would say, get a SolMan consultant engaged if you're serious about using SAP Solution Manager. Customers who get the right advise / involve the right people move much faster towards their goal.

Best regards

Tom

TomCenens
Active Contributor
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Hi Jelena

The free part is also where the difference is of course. Panaya has been interesting in the past and I bet it's still interesting but it's not necessarily cheap and SAP Solution Manager provides scenario's that provide similar (not the same) functionality where you have pro/con on both sides but the SAP Solution Manager scenario's are free for Enterprise Support (or higher) contract SAP customers.

I'll see what I can come up with, need to get info from those parties in that case but normally they don't mind that hehe .

A similar thing on the test management front, Panaya can also do test recording, SolMan offers CBTA (Component Based Test Automation) which is definitely not bad at all for recording and testing SAP UI based screens (whatever UI technology, as long as it's SAP so also UI5 etc). SAP is also further improving CBTA but of course there are paid alternatives (HP, IBM, ...) and some of those have certain functionality that CBTA doesn't have but you get up to price tags of 100K or 200K for one of those alternatives while CBTA is free for Enterprise Support (or higher) contract SAP customers. Sometimes it feels like picking the decently equipped car provided by your employer for example versus going for the full option car that you have to pay for yourself.

Best regards

Tom

prakhar_saxena
Active Contributor
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Hi SAP Admin Anamala,

You can refer the BPCA functionality which does the same(not a new but an old powerful functionality and get more advances with UPL etc)

there are some new advances like SEA which is more applicable for upgrade scenario without downloading stack file.

Best practice

https://support.sap.com/content/dam/library/SAP%20Support%20Portal/support-programs-services/solutio...

check the dedicated wiki of test management for more doc on both above topics

SAP Solution Manager WIKI - Test Suite - Solution Manager - SCN Wiki

Thanks

Prakhar