Chris Trueman's Blog

Release Notes Version 3.9.3 November 2019 Copyright (C) 1994-2019 Tricentis US Corp. All rights reserved. Contents Read This Section First Technical Support Before Installing LiveCompare Backward Compatibility What's New in this Release Known Issues Read This Section First These Release Notes contain the most recent information relating to the installation, configuration and operation...

LiveCompare 3.9.2 release 2 delivers the most powerful SAP application change impact analysis yet. Find out more here: https://www.tricentis.com/blog/august-release-sap-impact-analysis-smart-forms-rfc-api-security/

Release Notes Version 3.9.2 Copyright (C) 1994-2019 Tricentis US Corp. All rights reserved. Contents Read This Section First Technical Support Before Installing LiveCompare Backward Compatibility What's New in this Release Known Issues Read This Section First These Release Notes contain the most recent information relating to the installation, configuration and operation of the LiveCompare...

We have released LiveCompare 3.9.2. From the release cover letter: Whether you are embarking on a new SAP implementation, consolidating instances, upgrading to the latest support pack/enhancement pack or migrating to S/4HANA, testing will consume a significant portion of your time. LiveCompare is here to help. LiveCompare™ is the most advanced smart change impact analysis solution for SAP applications. LiveCompare...

A recent helpdesk ticket caused us to look at how LiveCompare works when configured behind a reverse proxy. I setup a simple test case using Apache as the reverse proxy running on Ubuntu. To get closer to the customer’s configuration I configured Apache with a self-signed certificate. IIS on the LiveCompare server only accepted regular http connections. In effect I had: client –(https)->reverse proxy...

Howard Hunter has revised the Inside LiveCompare guide for the recently release version 3.9. If you prefer hard copy you can order a print-on-demand copy from Amazon: amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Inside-LiveCompare-3-9-IntelliCorp/dp/1090826559 amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-LiveCompare-3-9-IntelliCorp/dp/1090826559 Amazon will charge you to cover the printing costs/shipping. IntelliCorp add...

LiveCompare 3.9 is now generally available. Customers can expect upgrade notices in the coming days. This is a complete LiveCompare release which means: * New ABAP components - to be installed into every SAP system analyzed with LiveCompare. * New server components - to be installed on your LiveCompare server. The following items are taken from the release notes: LiveCompare 3.9 includes the following new features...

LiveCompare's application server runs as a Windows service. This means it requires a valid user account in order to run. IntelliCorp recommends that LiveCompare is configured with a local account whose password never expires. As a service application, it can be difficult to know when the password has expired and how to update it. Current good password practice recommends that passwords are not set to expire. That...

PHD, UPL, SDD, OLC, XDS, reports, workflows, workspaces all use disk space. Finding out what’s consuming disk space beyond the high-level summary: required taking control of the server and using command line or open source tools like WinDirStat . Taking remote control of the server is generally a restricted function so how can this information be published to users? In LiveCompare 3.9 there’s a new action...

LiveCompare extracts SAP application data using a set of proprietary remote function calls (RFC) developed in ABAP and deployed in each SAP application server to be analysed. To invoke an RFC, LiveCompare must first authenticate with the SAP application server. The user account used by LiveCompare is subject to SAP authorisations. It is impossible for LiveCompare to access data that it hasn’t expressly been granted...

You can find the detailed jobspec here . In this post I want to explore what it means to be a LiveCompare server software engineer. LiveCompare comprises four tiers: ABAP Server Web Client The ABAP tier is made up of a number of remote callable functions (RFC) that implement LiveCompare’s “SAP application” API. The web tier is the broker between the client and server. We have four web...

LiveCompare records the browser “useragent” every time a user logs in. The useragent can be used (broadly speaking) to determine the device, OS and browser used to access LiveCompare. I’ve analysed the useragents from three of our demo servers. Desktop vs. Mobile Which is more popular? The desktop or mobile? Mobile Brands This chart shows the different mobile brands used: Browsers This...

LiveCompare 3.8 includes a new analysis that protects PRD SAP systems from experimental changes. Let’s start with this initial state: We have a custom program with three versions. The latest version has been imported into QAS and PRD. Now we start some experimental work on the program: With a drive to innovate faster, we can imagine a CR coming down the line that requires us to change the program: ...

Going behind the headlines of improved support for smart DevOps activities in: build, test and deploy, here's a comprehensive list of what's new in LiveCompare 3.8 taken from the release notes. Apps The Strider App identifies the used custom code impacted by SAP changes during the build phase of a Support Pack or Enhancement Pack upgrade. An ‘unreadable content’ error was resolved which occurred...

It starts with an idea. An idea to increase revenue. An idea to reduce costs. But wait! Ideas are nothing until turned into working software running in production. And suddenly we’re concerned with: Time-to-production Cost-to-production In the past I’ve said that the CEO cares about time-to-production while the CFO cares about cost-to-production. This contrast always reminded me of the great...

We’ve released an updated LiveCompare/LDAP WGI that follows the pattern laid down by the SharePoint and original WGI-based ALM integration (since replaced with built-in workflow actions). The update includes two WGIs: LDAPResMgr LDAPSearch LDAPResMgr is responsible for managing LDAP connections. A connection is essentially the combination of a username and password that’s associated with a symbolic...

LiveCompare 3.8 continues our long journey of integration with Micro Focus ALM that started all the way back with LiveModel and Mercury TestDirector. We’ve added a new action to support the general construction of test plan hierarchies. Customers asked for this so that they can easily replicate their requirements hierarchy in the subject tree. The new action is called Create Test Plan Hierarchy . It has a straight...

Sometimes an app will fail. Maybe the SQL written to process the data can’t handle a new case. Maybe an RFC Destination that was assumed to be 100% up is down. Whatever the case, whenever an app fails, LiveCompare preserves the state of the app in a workspace so that a studio user can go in, investigate the problem and resolve it. Once resolved the consumer can re-run the app. But what if the studio user could...

We added support for SNC way back in LiveCompare 3.2.1 (2015). Back then we implemented it as a distinct connection type giving users the choice of three types: Custom Application Server Group/Server Selection Secure Network Communication Server The upshot of this was that you couldn’t secure a group/server connection with SNC. And it turns out that SNC is not a connection type. It’s a characteristic...

LiveCompare 3.8 introduces support for several new BW 7.5 object types: Composite Provider Open ODS View Hybrid Provider DataStore Object (advanced) Support includes: Smart impact analysis Side-by-side comparison Quick Compare Discover of objects in transports Newer BW types are maintained using the Eclipse software with added plugins. RSA1 provides only a restricted view of the newer types...

In this post I showed how to secure your LiveCompare server with a self-signed certificate. While a self-signed certificate may be OK for an internal site, if your LiveCompare server is accessible over the Internet or you don’t want to confuse users: browsers really don’t like self-signed certificates then you’ll need a certificate from a certificate authority. For this post I chose Let’s Encrypt...

How do you compare versions of an ABAP class? It’s a bit of a trick question because classes aren’t versioned. Classes are made up of several independently versioned components including: Public properties Protected properties Private properties Methods Trying to compare two class versions means you must identify which parts should be compared. Then which versions of the chosen parts. All the...

The fastest way to protect your LiveCompare installation with SSL is to simply self-sign your IIS server. Start Internet Information Server Manager: Double-click Server Certificates : In the Actions panel on the far right, click the Create Self-Signed Certificate : Enter a friendly name and click OK . Confirm the certificate is shown: Expand Sites in the Connections panel. Select Default Web Site and...

In the Introducing LiveCompare 3.8 post I said that we wanted to do a better job of analysing data changes such as IMG configuration changes. First, let’s review what happens when we run Impact on a transport containing table content changes using LiveCompare 3.7R3. LiveCompare examines all the table keys in the input transports to find the set of affected tables. LiveCompare then simulates a table definition...

Long-time users of LiveCompare will remember we introduced syntax highlighting in our XDiff control all the way back in the late 2000s. This was in the days of ActiveX controls powering rich browser-hosted user experiences. XDiff was based on the excellent Scintilla open source project. We added the necessary support for ABAP syntax highlighting. The ActiveX controls had to be replaced when we added support for more...