SAP enhancement packages represent a new software delivery strategy that allows system administrators to get upgrades for SAP ECC 6.0 (ERP 2005) without having to fully upgrade the existing release. With the introduction of enhancement packages, SAP has changed the methodology for implementing new functionalities.

1 – SAP enhancement packages strategy

SAP enhancement packages  for ECC 6.0 include functional and technical enhancements, industry specific enhancements, uniformizations and simplifications. To browse through the available changes included in each SAP enhacement package, please go to http://service .sap.com/erp-ehp. Enterprise Services (ES) bundles are also now delivered with enhancement packages. Each one of these bundles  include a set of enterprise services to support end-to-end business processes (e.g. Order Product) across the SAP Business Suite. To learn which ES bundles are available please go to the Enterprise Services Wiki.

New SAP enhancement packages include the entire content and functionality of previous versions. SAP will continue to provide Support Packages for ECC 6.0, contaning legal changes and corrections, on a regular basis and during the defined maintenance period. SAP has also planned to deliver enhancement packages to other SAP applications like CRM or SCM.

2 – Must know before installation

There are two major features which differentiate SAP enhancement packages from older technologies:

Selective installation of software components: each enhancement package will contain the new versions of existing software components. Only the funcionality you want to use will be updated.
Selective activation of new functionality: new funcionality must be explicitly switched on and activated.

2.1 – Selective Installation

SAP enhancement packages allows updates to parts of the ECC system. It is now possible to update the ECC server or the Web AS. New HCM features are updated via the EA-HR component on the ECC server. The whole procedure is now more automated and controled by the Solution Manager – Maintenance Optimizer.

As part of the ongoing development of the Netweaver platform, SAP leverages the Enhancement and Switch Framework to enable new functionality. Ths installation of enhancement packages has no effect on the underlying layer of the SAP Netweaver platorm.

The installation process is detached from activation, which means that we can now provide the more recent functionality in the system as well as continue with the regular maintenance activities. To maximize performance and reduce effort, SAP enhancement packages should be applied in a queue, together with any necessary Support Packages. Note that after an enhancement package is installed and activated, it won’t be possible to revert this. SAP recommends that customers should have a Sandbox system to perform pretesting of new functionality, upgrades and patches.

3 – Installation

Effortwise, the system administration folks can look at enhacement packages as support packages. As explained above, both should be included in one queue. There are, however, some dependencies that need to be higlighted – SAP Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer will treat them automatically. The following tools are used for installation, depending on the type of software component:

• ABAP software components are installed using SAINT;
• Java software components are installed using JPSM;
• Portal Content and Business Packages are installed using JPSM;
• PI content is uploaded from the Integration Repository;
• BI content is applied as common Support packages.

3.1 – Prerequisites

• To use the Maintenance Optimizer, it is necessary to have the SAP Solution Manager aligned to the highest support package level in your system landscape. More information on the SAP Solution Manager at help.sap.com (SAP Solutions -> SAP Solution Manager);
• Make sure that the latest versions of SPAM and SAINT are updated in your systems;
• Read SAP note 1052522 to know in detail which Support Packages are required to install enhancement package 2;
• Note that software components included in SAP enhancement package 2 for SAP ECC 6.0 contain new developments as well as corrections. So by looking at the system after applying the enhancement packages, there will be some software components in version 600 (with SP level 10) as well as software components in versopn 602 (with SP level 0 which contain equivalent correction to SP level 10 of the same component in version 600);

3.2 – Select the Software Components

Select the software components which correspond to the business functions needed.

• More on SAP enhancement package 2 in SAP Note 1052470
• More on SAP enhancement package 3 in SAP Note 1083576.

3.3 – Identify and download SAP enhancement packages using SAP Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer

Create a new maintenance transaction for upgrading your system with SAP enhancement package 2 for ECC 6.0. A guided procedure is used to lead the user through the initial upgrade process. Select all the systems which will be affected by the upgrade. Afterwards, select the Technical Usages to apply for the systems. The SAP Solution Manager will automatically calculate all the necessary Support Packages and new software components needed for the chosen technical usages.

• Read more about the SAP Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer at service.sap.com/solman-mopz.

3.4 – Update ABAP software components using SAINT

SAP reccomends importing the SAP enhancement package and required support packages in one import queue. It might be necessary to adjust modifications after applying an update or support package. This can be done at once if you use a single queue.

• More on SAINT at help.sap.com (SAP Netweaver > SAP Netweaver 7.0 > “Access the SAP Netweaver Library”)

3.5 – Update Java Components and Portal Content using JSPM

You can use the document result of the SAP Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer in the JSPM tool, to create a single import queue.

• More on JSPM at help.sap.com (SAP Netweaver > SAP Netweaver 7.0 > “Access the SAP Netweaver Library”)

3.6 – Update PI Content

The PI or ESR-Content corresponding to the PI version in use must be installed.

• More information on PI Content in chapter 2 of the eSOA Master Guide.

3.7 – Update Library

The more detailed application documentation will be installed on the server, through the chosen business functions. This means that only the relevant SAP library will be updated, according to the components you have updated.

• More on SAP Library at SAP Note 1066110.

4 – Additional Links and Resources

• SAP Enhancement Master Guide
• Enterprise SOA Master Guide
• SAP Service Marketplace
• Standard test case templates
• Introducing SAP enhancement packages for SAP ERP
• SAP Enhancement Packages for Business Suite and SAP NetWeaver
• Survival Tips for the EHP Installer for SAP ERP

4.1 – Support Package Stack Equivalence Level

Note – to check installed Enhancement Packages in a system and their level, use transaction code SPAM.

Related posts:

1. How To Do a Support Package Stack Upgrade – Part 1
2. SAPLAB Version 2.0 is on-line!
3. ECC6 Enhancement Framework in 100 lines

Our recent new joiner expert in SAPLAB.org has launched an idea aiming to promote knowledge exchange through the blog. On a moderated basis, Helder Gonçalves is willing to answer your specific SAP questions with a professional answer, pointer or even a solution. It all depends on the type of challenge you present to him and the interest of your question/answer for our blog and to the SAP community.

Helder’s skills cover a wide set of SAP functional and technical topics: implementation and development for all major modules and sub-modules like HR/HCM, MM, SD, FI, CO, TR, AA, RE, PM. Specialities include ABAP development in OO, ECC6 new functionalities, ECC6 Enhancement Framework, SAPScript, Smartforms, ALV OO interactive reporting, dynamic code programming, Portal applications and Business Workflow.

So go along and ask away. Please send your questions by e-mail to hfgoncalves@saplab.org. We will be updating a FAQ section with the relevant Q&A. Later we will also be enabling a forum with lots of SAP topics and categories, easier to categorize questions and answers.

Check around SAPLAB.org and many thanks or your contribution!

No related posts.

The Product Availability Matrix bundles technical and release planning information on SAP components for quick reference. You will find information on the availability of SAP component releases (product versions), maintenance end dates and upgrade paths, as well as technical release information (DB-platforms, JSE-platforms, operating systems etc.). A SAP component release is structured into instances. An instance is a bundle of technically dependent software component versions to be installed on one single logical system. The technical release information is displayed per instance.

Example: The product version SAP NetWeaver 7.0 is structured into the instances ‘Application Server ABAP’, ‘Application Server Java’, ‘Enterprise Portal‘, ‘Frontend’ etc. The ‘Application Server ABAP’ itself consists mainly of the software component versions SAP BW 7.00, SAP ABA 7.00, SAP BASIS 7.00 and SAP Kernel 7.00 32-BIT (or a newer downward compatible one).

Please note that you will need a valid SAP OSS user in order to access SAP’s Product Availability Matrix (PAM) website.

In case you don’t have a company issued SAP user, here’s your opportunity to get the SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Product Availability Matrix (PAM) document, just click on the download link below.

Related posts:

1. SAP Netweaver Main Release Downloads

Since the launch of the first release of SAP, the visual design of SAP products has gone through several changes and re-design. From the 1970′s until early 1990′s, graphic design was not so much considered in SAP products – functionality always is the prime focus. At those “early days”, the look and feel and usability of SAP software was influenced by the dominant operating system – OSF/Motif and Microsoft Windows. The first SAP re-design was in 1998 with the Enjoy design theme. This theme was now more focused on rich color, texture and dimensionality, with minor details took care at extreme. This was a major breakthrough by SAP, making it’s software instantly recognizable until these days. Comparing to other vendors, SAP achieved higher rates in terms of user friendliness and usability, putting SAP in a leadership position in visual design for business software.

Following the Enjoy theme design for GUI, SAP then focused in the web design strategy. With the rising of SAP Portals, SAP products harmonized on a lighter, cleaner and straightforward design theme called Tradeshow.

Evolution of Design Themes

The figures below show the same transaction in several visual design themes:

Figure 1 – SAP GUI for Microsoft Windows Theme

Figure 2 – SAP GUI in the Enjoy Theme

Figure 3 – SAP GUI in the Tradeshow Theme

Applying different themes doesn’t change the functionality of the transaction. The core application remains the same. So when creating new themes, there are a set of rules and several aspects to take care, since once a theme is officially deployed, it can be used my millions of users in the world.

The New Signature Design Theme

The third revolution in visual design at SAP is the new Signature design theme. A special SAP team located in Waldorf, Germany, has worked hard on this new theme, from 2007 until the end of 2008 and to deliver the latest design theme for SAP applications.  It may sound a long time to deliver a new design theme, but remember that this new visual appearance has to comply with several SAP applications and will cover millions of UI’s in the world.

Figure 4 – Example of the Signature design, SAP Business ByDesign screen running in the SAP NetWeaver Business Client

Figure 5 – The same transaction shown in figures 1-3 running in the Signature Theme

SAP’s Design Guild summarizes with:

With ten design patents pending for the Signature design and loads of positive feedback from customers, the SAP User Experience – Visual Design team is exceedingly proud of this new design and will be evolving it for quite a few years to come. That is, until we start the next revolution.

Article based on official SAP information.

Additional links and resources

• The signature design under microscope
• Visual Design for Business Software
• SAP visual design vision, mission and strategy

No related posts.

With a global crisis ongoing, things have changed quite a bit in the IT and Information Systems scenario, it what concerns to employment and career development. These are good times for us to assess our own skills and check if some adjustments need to be done. Typical questions of an aware SAP Consultant can be: “Am I getting too specific in my area? Am I missing a bigger picture?”. On the other hand: “Am I too generic? Do I need to elaborate and deepen my knowledge in a specific area?”. And finally: “What will be the outcome of my actions? Will I be able to get a better job or position? Will I perform better in my current job?”.

I guess that at a given point, anyone working with SAP has asked himself these questions. As a matter of fact, anyone working in technical areas will ask these questions from time to time. My opinion is that it’s good to be aware and wanting to make changes when necessary and if the opportunity arises. Of course there is the idea, but you also need to put it in practice… we really must develop our areas of expertise if we want to survive in a “hostile” world as it is nowadays.

Anyway, by browsing around the web and talking to people from the area, there are some conclusions to be analyzed. Independent SAP analyst Jon Reed, for instance, has written an interesting post regarding what he classified as Hot, Warm and Not-so-warm SAP areas.

The first consideration is that a “hot” skill might be “torrid” to person A and totally dull to person B. Jon Reed shares his thoughts in a very clear way:

I’m not a big fan of recommending “hot” SAP areas. The skills chase often leaves a crazy career path behind it. What makes sense is not to chase what’s hot but to add a new skill that logically builds on core experience. There’s a big difference between a natural extension of skills (which looks good on a resume) and the mad pursuit of something new (which tends to look frantic). With that disclaimer in mind, here are some hot (and not so hot) areas that the folks I talked to singled out. Keep in mind that when we say “hot,” we don’t mean that these skills were mentioned in a PowerPoint at a trade show. For our purposes, “hot” means that we’ve seen these skills on actual job orders and placed people with these skills.

Hot Areas

• Core Financials, HR, and to a lesser extent SD/MM on the ECC 5.0 and ECC 6.0 versions of SAP in particular. On the mySAP Financials side, the ECC FI New General Ledger is “very hot.” On the mySAP HCM side, beyond the core HR functions like Payroll and Benefits, advanced HR functionalities like Performance Management and LSO (Learning Solution, e-Learning, etc.) are also in demand.
• NetWeaver and BI: XI/PI installation, ECC systems upgrade from R/3, BW upgrade from 3.5 to BI 7.0, MDM 5.5.

Warm

• mySAP Business Suite (SRM, CRM, PLM)
• Some industry verticals, in particular the retail solutions (IS-Retail and IS-AFS)

Not-so-warm

• ABAP/Legacy Skills and Supply Chain Planning (APO component of mySAP SCM)

Surprising trend: Has the power of certification returned?

One thing that comes as a bit of a surprise: For the first time in years, I’m hearing firsthand stories about folks who managed to break into SAP armed only with a certification. Recently, I heard from two lucky people who have done it: one on the Financials side and one on the CRM side.

At this point, I haven’t seen enough broad confirmation on this point to recommend certifications again as a way of breaking into SAP, but we can say this much: When folks with only certification are getting consulting jobs, that means the demand for SAP skills is as high as it’s been in years. Just remember that it’s still a “winners and losers” market and that the demand for skills is most likely focused on particular niches, most of them on the functional side of SAP. “Research before you leap” still applies.

Are these bad times for freelancers?

Freelancers in SAP are known for their high daily rates. The more experienced and more full-cycle implementations they have in their resumes, the more experienced they are, therefore, the more expensive they are. But clients aren’t paying for nothing, most of the freelancers I know start producing the minute they touch the systems and due to their large experience, they solve problems.

An important sign that the SAP market is on the move is the number of companies that are looking to bring in more permanent employees for their in-house SAP teams. SAP customers now want to bring quality SAP resources in-house that they can rely on, to reduce costs and promote those people solid careers. Having a permanent SAP job can also be an opportunity to develop your skills. There are also companies who offer training as a fringe benefit, whereas a freelancer will have to pay any specific training from his own pocket.

Conclusion

In case your having doubts, always choose to develop your skills instead of thinking and molding your career in terms of the rate you wish to accomplish.

Read Jon Reed’s full article here

• SAP Consulting Trends in SearchSAP.com

Additional links and resources

• IT Jobs Watch, Tracking the IT Job Market
• Payscale salary reports
• Jon Reed on SAP Consulting

No related posts.

Learn how the latest release of SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) can help you develop and execute customer-driven strategies by providing a simple and powerful foundation to support collaborative end-to-end processes. See a demonstration of the new functionality in SAP CRM, including the new user interface, next-generation trade promotion management, business communications management, and marketing development funds management.

• Access the oficial content (Webcast, Presentation, Audio) by clicking on this link (you need a valid OSS user account).

No related posts.

On February 4, 2009, SAP unveiled SAP Business Suite 7, a next-generation software suite that helps businesses to optimize their performance and reduce IT cost. The press conference included remarks from SAP co-CEO Léo Apotheker and Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP Executive Board Member, Business Solutions & Technology. In addition to the executive presentations and a product demo, the press conference featured a customer panel with high-level executives from major Fortune 500 companies and a question-and-answer session.

Business Suite 7 represents a new way of software deployment more than a features upgrade. With the new approach, SAP said it’s doing away with its conventional upgrade process for software applications. SAP Business Suite 7 represents the most current versions of SAP’s business applications, including those for managing supply chains, product life cycles, customer relationship, among others. Once upgraded, customers won’t have to do a full upgrade for five years.

SAP is syncing all of its improvements to its applications so that they’ll all be available at the same time. Customers will then be able to pick and choose from the provided Enhancement Packages as little or as much as they want, according to SAP.

The suite announcement also includes “Value Scenarios,” or industry-specific software modules SAP is developing to help companies analyze a specific issue, such as the shopping experience in the retail industry, by viewing data across applications, or implement a business process across applications, such as collaborative engineering, in the manufacturing industry. This approach uses dashboard and other technologies incorporated from SAP’s Business Objects acquisition.

A customer that now upgrades to Business Suite 7, for example, won’t have to do a full resource-intensive upgrade to SCM one month and a full upgrade to CRM several months later. Instead, that customer can choose only the enhancements it wants for SCM and CRM from a single enhancement package. The first package is due later this year.

This could now encourage companies still on ERP R/3 to make the upgrade to ERP 6.0, which already uses the enhancement approach and is compatible with Business Suite 7, while R/3 isn’t.

Watch the below video on which SAP Executive Board Member Jim Hagemann Snabe introduces the new SAP Business Suite 7.

Additional links and resources

• Watch the replay
• Download photos from the launch event

No related posts.

This SAP tutorial shows the way users can use the Assistance Class and Message Class to create Multilanguage massages and the use of UI Elements: PhaseIndicator, LinkToAction, ViewConteinerUIElement, MessageArea, DropDownByKey, InputField, Lebel, Group, HorizontalGutter, TransparentConteiner and ABAP Dictionary Repository Objects: Domains and Data elements.

Please click on the following link to access tutorial Messages internationalization with Web Dynpro ABAP.

No related posts.

SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment is a platform for building and running applications based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles. It offers a set of capabilities for integrating new and existing services (from SAP as well as proprietary services), into business-specific solutions. You can develop portable, standard-compliant applications based on the latest Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5 technologies and integrate them in existing SAP and third-party solutions using a central enterprise service registry. SAP NetWeaver CE increases development productivity by providing model-driven composition tools for creating services and user interfaces and orchestrating them into collaborative user-centric workflows.

Please click on the following link to access the oficial Masterguide:

No related posts.