Chris Trueman's Blog : livecompare, upgrade

SAP Upgrade: User Tcode Analysis

Chris Trueman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:57:00 GMT

Upgrades are a great time to look again at security provisioning. Natural expansion of authorizations since the last major project or first implementation will likely mean that there is quite a difference between what users have the potential to run and what they actually use or should be using. LiveCompare includes a dedicated template for analyzing users’ potential-vs-actual use. It’s called U.09 – User Tcode Usage Analysis and you’ll find it in the Upgrade Analysis folder.

The template does two things. First it calculates, based on each user’s roles/profiles, what transactions they have the potential to run. Second it collects from production a record of each user’s transaction history. A number of reports are available from a high-level summary to a detailed inspection of an individual account.

[Updated: 2009.03.30 - I added more examples to the benchmark and sorted the chart from smallest usage of potential to largest. With this many datapoints it looks like smaller communities have tighter fitting security provisioning.]

I took a quick look at 10 analyses and the pattern is clear: potential massively outweighs actual. With end-user communities ranging in size from 350 to 10,000 users, the average utilization ranged from 1% to 27%. The chart below summarises the analysis:

While upgrades tend to focus attention on security provisioning, we’re seeing more customers set this analysis up to run every month as a way to monitor usage and maintain a minimal security surface area.

SAP Upgrade: Unused Custom Code

Chris Trueman — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:43:00 GMT

I wrote here about using LiveCompare to fully understand the impact of significant SAP changes as part of an upgrade and mentioned that LiveCompare includes a template to identify unused custom code. It’s called U.03 – Unused Custom Code and you’ll find it in the Upgrade Analysis folder.

LiveCompare uses a series of patterns to match the names of objects and classify them either as SAP or custom. If you use a namespace to house your customizations then you’ll definitely want to update the CustomObjectsNamingPatterns External Data Source (XDS) that’s installed when you install the LiveCompare Templates. The first five rows look like this:

Type	SapQuery	Like	RegEx	IorE
ALL	Y*	Y%	^Y	I
ALL	Z*	Z%	^Z	I
ALL	/ICORP/*	/ICORP/%	^/ICORP/	I
TCOD	Y*	Y%	^Y	I

If my namespace is /ACME/ I’d add a row just after the /ICORP/* line to look like:

ALL	/ICORP/*	/ICORP/%	^/ICORP/	I
ALL	/ACME/*	/ACME/%	^/ACME/	I
TCOD	Y*	Y%	^Y	I

The template first discovers all the custom objects in the as-is system then cross references this with the SAP performance history database on production (we recommend using the production for retrieving this data as it is the most accurate source of historical usage data).

If in the timeframe that performance history data is available, a custom object hasn’t been executed then it is marked as unused.

This report should not be taken at face value and all the identified programs deleted from the upgrade. There’s always the chance that some of them have been run, just outside the time window for which performance history is available.

Instead the report should be split by application area (or devclass if this provides better segmentation) and each subset handed off to the functional lead for review. Based on their Yes/No feedback, the set of programs that may be retired during the upgrade can be readily identified.

Eliminating unused custom code from the upgrade project eliminates wasted effort developing and testing programs that will never be used in the new production environment.

A question was asked by one customer: “What about eliminating unused sub-objects?” The point is that if you have a custom program that’s unused and it exclusively depends on, let’s say, five function modules how do we identify the five function modules? You’ll find a template to handle that case here on iShare in the media area. Here’s the direct link.

SAP Upgrade: Impacted Used Custom Code

Chris Trueman — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:01:00 GMT

With SAP systems running approximately 30%[1] custom code, it's vital that in preparing for an upgrade consideration is given to how the new version will impact our customizations. LiveCompare includes a dedicated template for analyzing used custom code automatically. It's called: U.01 - Impacted Used Custom Code and you'll find it in the Upgrade Analysis folder.

The basic idea is to focus on used custom code - there's another template that highlights all the unused custom code - and determine all the standard SAP objects (function modules, screens, tables, structures, etc.) that are referenced. Once all the standard objects have been identified, LiveCompare does a live comparison between the as-is and to-be systems to see whether the objects have changed significantly. The keyword is 'significantly'. From a development perspective, if SAP change the font on a label on a screen the impact of the change on some custom program that interfaces via the screen will be zero. LiveCompare has pre-configured intelligent filters to eliminate the noise from the comparison, leaving a clear report that says this is the custom code that must be changed and why. The live comparison doesn’t just find SAP objects that have changed. It also finds all the obsolete objects. So if I have a custom program that depends on a function module that SAP have eliminated in the to-be release, the template finds it and the output report highlights it. One of the main advantages of doing a live comparison is that nothing is missed.

The template outputs a Microsoft Access formatted database that includes a number of reports that look at the results from different perspectives. One is a top-down view starting with each used custom program. It shows all the dependent SAP objects and whether they are 'different' - they exist in both as-is and to-be systems but SAP have changed them significantly - or 'in1' - the object is obsolete and doesn't exist in the targeted upgrade release.

Another report takes a bottom-up approach starting with the significantly different SAP objects and highlighting just how many used custom objects are affected. This report is a real bonus when it comes to planning and realizing the upgrade because in general there's a great deal of reuse going on in SAP implementations. LiveCompare always finds that 10s of custom objects depend on the same significantly changing SAP object. Fix 1 case and you invariably fix all 10. By publishing this information in a readily shared format, development teams don't waste time duplicating effort. This saves you time in the realization phase of the upgrade project.

If you told me that I could have just one analysis to support an upgrade project, it would be this one.

[1] Based on the analysis of around 500 production SAP systems using SOLO – IntelliCorp’s free online SAP system scanner. Find it at http://solo.intellicorp.com.