TM-TMS (Transport Manager)
Several advantages at once
Users do not have to deal with individual tables, but can access a database of business entities. This means that they do not select tables, but business objects such as employees or documents. To do this, however, the tools must contain the object dependencies for SAP's complex data model. Even companies that offer the setup of test systems as a service rarely do this for any SAP dataset. In addition, users can define objects themselves to accommodate customizing and in-house developments.
Typically, the "homogeneous SAP system copy" process involves a large number of manual activities. A certain skill level is required for this, which leads to the fact that usually the employees of the SAP Basis department or external service providers realize the system copy. Depending on the structure and size of the systems, this process can take anywhere from hours to several days. In addition to making the target systems unavailable to operations and project teams, system and landscape copies also block SAP Basis administrators. Other challenges include the varying duration and quality (completeness) of the results depending on the processor, time dependency on the employees performing the work, etc.
Ways of SAP system copy: export / import
If the data stocks become obsolete, they can be updated by another system copy. From a technical point of view, such a refresh corresponds to the initial setup, including the associated costs as well as the load on the productive systems and manual rework. In addition, a refresh also interrupts all processes on the target system. If it is a development system, all newer development objects must be saved and transported back in after the copy. The version history is lost in the process.
Until now, it has been common practice to create test systems as a client or system copy of the production system on a specific date. In these cases, a single client or the entire SAP system is duplicated. The corresponding instances of the SAP system have to be reinstalled. In addition, a copy of the source database must be created. These are standard procedures, but they can be disproportionately expensive for productive data sets of several terabytes. SAP and third-party tools for selective data extraction can significantly reduce the cost of deploying non-production SAP systems.
There is a useful product for SAP system copy - "Shortcut for SAP Systems".
Thus, the proposed solution allows you to optimize the automation and acceleration of SAP system copies generated for upgrades and reduce IT administration costs.
For this, the SAP systems to be copied must allow access at operating system level.