Especially because of the upcoming migration from ERP/ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4 Hana, more and more test as well as training systems have been implemented. However, SAP customers still operating NetWeaver-based ECC systems also need test and training systems for numerous purposes.
Whether it is ECC 6.0 or S/4, testing can include replicating business cases, analyzing incidents, and regression tests according to defined regression scenarios not available in productive systems.
What does this mean? If companies want to test any of these situations, they will need a test system. Therefore, they need to make recent data available for testing, analytics, and simulations.
Depending on size and scope, this can be a challenge for employees as generating data for complex scenarios and reconstructing incident data can be laborious and time-consuming. Furthermore, especially regression test scenarios have to be created repeatedly.
Also challenging is the complete anonymization of the transferred data. This becomes especially important in the wake of GDPR.
Numerous test functionalities
What features should a smart solution for test data generation offer? And which functionalities must such a solution provide?
Of course, a testing solution has to be focused on the requirements of SAP systems. This means that it needs a high performance when processing mass data with two or more SAP solutions. Consequently, the data models of SAP solutions need to be considered when searching for a test and migration solution.
Furthermore, companies should be able to implement such a solution without any additional infrastructure (server, database, storage) for secure transfer of master data. This is only possible if the solution is coded in Abap and can therefore be integrated into existing SAP environments via Transport.
It’s worth mentioning that this solution should not be just a system copy tool, but it should be able to leverage data from system copies for generating test data.
The solution also has to be able to not only transfer test data from a productive system to a testing system; but also to another productive system, like in the case of a migration, or to a development or QA system.
The solution furthermore needs to transfer not only SAP standard tables, but also customized ones. It should also let customers choose between transferring master data with or without anonymization.
Parallel processes
If companies require a new test system, time is often one of the most important factors. This means that generating and selecting test data as well as data transfer has to happen quickly.
Nowadays, many testing systems are implemented because companies want to be able to more quickly and flexibly react to sudden changes in the market. It’s been proven that agility increases time-to-market; even if you need to anonymize e.g. 100 million customer data sets based on SAP Business Partner and customized tables.
Key to this agility is leveraging parallel processes. Especially high data volumes can be transferred more quickly if using parallel processes.
GTW Management Consulting’s Advanced Test and Migration solution (short: ATS) meets all the requirements listed above. Many international and national SAP customers have been using this solution for years. It considers the specific requirements of test data generation and more.
The software engine can help in creating lean and efficient SAP testing systems. Furthermore, the solution is able to create training systems and transfer recent incidents from productive systems to development systems. ATS can also be used as migration tool.
For many SAP solutions, the software engine provides customizing templates. ATS can also enhance customer-specific tables through customizing.
The ATS engine is installed on the testing, QA, or development system. The installation usually takes half a day.
The transfer of application data from one system to another happens through RFC and DBCO interfaces. ATS also has a monitoring component which can easily check which application data has already been transferred and if any errors have occurred.
Naturally, a refresh through deleting and re-importing data is also possible.
Focused and useful
The ATS solution was created about ten years ago because of data in operating systems which was not up to date or high quality. Over the years, we saw that customers only benefit from the GTW SAP add-on.
The solution can build up lean and manageable SAP test and training systems while upholding a high standard of data protection through anonymizing production data. Other benefits include quick processing of incidents and a significant decrease in infrastructure, maintenance, and operational costs through reducing laborious system copies.
Furthermore, the solution guarantees shorter development cycles through up-to-date test data and a sustainable quality increase in development and test environments.
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