Best Practice: SAPGUI Version and Patch Upgrades

[Former Member]

Hello -

Does anyone have some thoughts/information on best practices relating to SAPGUI version and patch upgrades.

Obviously, sometimes upgrades are forced upon us (e.g. 7.10 for Vista) and in other cases it may just be considered "nice to have".

Either way - it always signifies regression test and deployment effort. How do we balance the benefit and cost?

Thanks, Steve

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Peter -

If I understand right - you're saying that you deploy patch updates twice a year (along with patches to SAP).

Do all of your users therefore have to reinstall SAPGUI in order to upgrade the patch level or is there a "lighter" way of doing the upgrade?

We've found that all of our users have to (a) uninstall and (b) reinstall the full installation file - this takes a lot of time and resources... therefore, obviously not ideal.

regards, Steve

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Steve,

you're right for the first part, yes, we (usually) patch twice a year.

Now for the rest

An uninstall will only happen on release changes (6.20->6.40->7.10), i. e. about every 4-5 years as SAP releases them.

Patches are applied to the installation server and the setup on the client will only update changed program parts. For example, upgrading 6.40->7.10 took about 10 minutes (incl. uninstall), applying patch 1 less than 5 minutes.

I recommend, you read the "SAP Frontend Installation Guide - 7.10" which you find at SMP alias sapgui. Navigate to Media Library - Literature. It explains setup of the installation server (sounds like a big thing, but ain't much more than creating a share), creating packages, applying updates etc.

Peter

--

Points always appreciated

[Former Member]

Hi Steve,

we deploy the (then) actual patch about 4 weeks before a sp will be applied to the SAP-system, which happens twice a year. Other patches will only be deployed if there it's relevant, i.e. solves a problem in functions our users use.

IT-Dept. gets the patch first as testers and, if there's no trouble with it, the rest of the users get it a week later.

Release changes don't happen often since SAP doesn't release new ones We just upgraded from 6.20 to 7.10 as part of our ERP upgrade project.

Hope this gives you some clue,

Peter