Dear All,
wM version - 9.7
One of our source/target system is SAP ECC 6 or R/3 system. We have many integrations with the SAP system which are mostly IDoc based and few are via RFC as well. Now, the SAP team wants to go for an upgrade from the current service pack level 3 to upgrade SP15. We are trying to work out all the activities which will be required to cover this upgrade.
Would request you all for your views on the below points and also add up any activity which I might have missed out:-
- Will the SAP adapter connections be affected? I feel it should be good and only need a refresh
- Under what scenario will the integrations be afftected due to this upgrade.
- If the IDOC structure changes for few standard IDoc types, we need to update the wM code as well to sync the updated IDoc structure. Is there any other such activity to take care of ?
- The RFCs which are being invoked from wM services might need some change. What all changes are we looking into apart from input/output signature changes ?
Any other such points which we should keep in mind to cover the upgrade smoothly. All suggestions are welcome
Thanks,
Kushal
Could anyone update back with their comments please…
@RMG/Holger/Mahesh/Rankesh
Regards,
Kushal
Hi Kushal,
It is recommended to stop the Listeners and Connections to the affected SAP instance during upgrade.
These can be enabled again afterwards.
This will refresh the DDIC Cache too, which contains the Metadata for the IDocs and RFCs.
It is hard to determine if structures are changing or not. This can only be detected by testing.
If structures are changing you will have to refresh the RFC Adapter Services and Listeners
What is your Adapter Fix Level?
Which JCo Version are you using?
Regards,
Holger
Thanks Holger.
The SAP adapter fix level is - SAP Adapter 7.1 Fix 13 7.1.0.13.872
JCo version is 3 I guess - WmSAP/code/jars/static/sapjco3.jar
Also, I wanted to do as much analysis as possible to come up with an accurate estimate before the upgrade. Will that be possible apart from being ready with the connection and listener level activities.
Is there any other activity which we need to take care of before and after the upgrade. I am new to this hence asking so many queries 
Please bear with me on this one.
Regards,
Kushal
Hi Kushal,
please provide a copy of the about page of the SAP Adapter Admin UI (the last link in the navigation).
This one also contains the exact JCo and IdocJco versions.
SAP Adapter 7.1 is the first one supporting JCo 3.x, the previous Adapter versions were only supporting JCo 2.x.
Certain JCo Versions require a specific minlmum FixLevel on the Adapter side.
See Readme of the SAP Adapter Fix for further informations.
We only stop the connectiviity to the SAP systems and suspend the triggers (process subscription or regular trigggers) to avoid failures when trying to send messages to inactive SAP intances.
After the SAP instance has finished its maintenance we start the connectivity and enable the suspended triggers are again.
Then we do some checks with the partner system if the Listeners are registered correctly.
This can be checked by SAP Administrator by doing a lookup in SM59 transaction and searching for the Program ID.
To check if there have been changes to the Idocs or rfc structures you can do a lookup in the SAP instance and compare this output with a sample taken from before the update.
It is considered a good practice to test the update in a DEV or QA environment and do some tests to find modified structures.
But this is not 100% safe as we had an issue during the last update on one of our SAP partner systems where a segment in an IDoc (quite large → more than 1000 fields in total) were appended additional field which we were not aware of as we are validationg the Idocs against a schmea definition, which caused an “Undefined Object found” for the new fields.
As we were not allowed to the change the definition in our code the partner system is filtering the fields and drop these new fields before handing the Idoc over to us.
Regards,
Holger
Thanks Holger,
This is very informative and similar to what I was looking for. Also, we do not have access to SAP adapter UI as that lies with the infra team. I cross checked the JCo .jar file and it is version 3 as shown below:-
/opt/softwareag/IntegrationServer/instances/default/packages/WmSAP/code/jars/static/sapidoc3.jar
/opt/softwareag/IntegrationServer/instances/default/packages/WmSAP/code/jars/static/sapjco3.jar
/opt/softwareag/IntegrationServer/instances/default/packages/WmSAP/code/jars/static/wmsap.jar
Hence, in short we have to keep a snapshot of the interfaces and idoc structures in hand prior to the upgrade. Next, we need to handle the listener and connections and work with the DDIC cache once the upgrade is complete. Next, we need to test the interfaces, both inbound and outbound looking for structure changes and fix it on the go. We will do it in DEV and then only migrate to upper environments.
Please correct if my understanding is not correct.
Also, do wee need to look into the RFCs for any changes.??
Regards,
Kushal
Hi Kushal,
do you have access to IS Admin UI?
SAP Adapter UI is accessible from the Adapters section.
Or you can try the following URL:
http://:/WmRoot/adapter-index.dsp?url=%2FWmSAP%2FListResources.dsp%3FadapterTypeName%3DWmSAP%26dspName%3D.LISTRESOURCES&adapter=WmSAP&text=SAP+Adapter&help=true
Please find the extract of the About Page from my SAP Adapter as a reference below:
Description webMethods SAP Adapter
Adapter Version 7.1.0.14.888
Updates SAP_7.1_Fix14
JCA Spec Version 1.0
Vendor Name Software AG
OS Version 5.11
Current User <user>
Working Directory <IS-Root>/IntegrationServer
JCo Version 3.0.14 (2015-12-16)
JCo Middleware JavaRfc
JCo Middleware Version 2.2.17
JCo Native Library Version 721.619
JCo Native Library Location <IS-Root>/IntegrationServer/lib/libsapjco3.so
IDoc Library Version 3.0.12 (2015-02-10)
You can try to open the jar files (sapjco3.jar and sapidoc3.jar) with any Zip-compatible pogram and check for the file META-INF/MANIFEST.MF. This one should also contain the requested version info.
The connections and listeners were not affected by the updates on SAP side.
First thing being involved might be the listener notifications (both rfc and idoc) as well as the rfc outbound adapter services.
DDIC cache gets cleared when the connection is disabled and gets fiiled after the connection is enabled and the structure is being used for the first time afterwards.
When doing planned changes to interfaces (Idocs or rfcs) it is recommended to clear the affteced structures from the DDIC cache before doing a fresh lookup otherwise the cache might not be refreshed correctly with the new data.
Regards,
Holger
Sure Holger,
Actually, we do not get access to Admin UI. The information I gave you came in from the custom dashboard we have for our IS instances. I have raised a service request to gather the information to be double sure. I will get back by tomorrow with the updates.
Thanks,
Kushal
Hi Holger,
Got the response from the Team Mostly pertaining to 21st Nov 2014 updates.
JCo version - 3.0.12
JCo middleware - JavaRfc
JCo middleware version - 2.2.13
JCo native lib version - 720.713
Idoc lib version - 3.0.11
Regards,
Kushal
Hi Kushal,
sounds good so far.
Latest JCo is version 3.0.15 from September 2016 in combination with Idoc Api 3.0.12 from February 2015.
Latest SAP Adapter Fix is currently SAP_7.1_Fix15 from February 2016.
Regards,
Holger
Thanks Holger for the support.
Will ping back on this thread on the progress to keep a track of things.
Regards,
Kushal