Do you have a full set of regression test cases of your SAP PI/PO system and can run them when needed to ensure that nothing is broken?
This week I was talking with a potential customer about our testing tool and the newest feature where they did not need to install anything on the PI system. They did, unfortunately, have a too old version of one of the components to allow us to read the log messages. It was added with OSS 2437778.
It is the standard way out to add new features to patches or service packs to give customers the features they require. Most of all the time you want to be able to leverage the new functions in some scenarios to solve a business need.
SAP delivers Java code as cumulative patches. This mean that patch 3 contains updates from patch 2 plus some more changes. So you cannot just get the fix you want as you can with ABAP.
They are also linked with dependencies so if you upgrade one, some parts will stop functioning because it is missing a dependent library. So most of the time you have to update quite a few components and you have no idea about how this will affect everything else. You can read the release notes, but it is difficult or close to impossible to predict how this will impact your system.
And to make matters even worse, you probably need to upgrade all components to the latest to ensure all dependencies are met.
In a normal company it will take a long time to validate these things, so if you’re just adding a simple feature it is really a no go to do this. The business case is difficult to explain, we want this feature to do X, but it will cost a lot of testing. So you have to wait for the business to ask for a new feature and then that project would have to pay for the upgrade/patch.
That’s the reason why I want to have a full set of regression test cases that you can just run whenever there is any patch or an upgrade that you have to ensure that everything works as expected without involving people in the testing of the new features.
The cost of an upgrade is partly Basis work to upgrade the system and partly testing the components. The biggest cost is the tests that you need to perform to ensure that everything works as expected. It therefore makes sense to automate that part if possible.
Most test tools take a long time to set up the test cases, and that’s why we’ve created a tool to enable you to set up these test cases fast. We had a customer Anadarko Petroleum Corporation that could set up 300 test cases in just 3 weeks.
Since then we have optimized the process a lot, making it much faster to set up test cases.
The cost of running the test for the full system is close to zero, so you can run them daily to get information about how the system performs or if anything is broken.
So you can apply the latest support packs if you want to have an updated system with the latest features and fixes.
You can start a free trial of the Figaf DevOps Suite to test on your own SAP PI/PO system, and see our prices. If you already have the patch mentioned, you don’t need to install anything on your system, and in many cases you can use your own user for the testing.
