EPI-

EPI-USE Data Sync Manager

Efficient replication of SAP Business

Objects to pre-production systems

Affiliated to the world-wide EPI-USE organisation

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 Efficient replication of SAP
EPI-USE Data Sync
Business Objects to pre-
Manager
production systems

Introduction
This paper will discuss the challenges SAP customers face in keeping their pre-
production systems refreshed with up to date test and training data and how the EPI-
USE Data Sync Manager for ERP product can be used to address this. Data Sync
Manager allows users to selectively copy SAP application data from a production
system in to pre-production systems, without affecting repository data. This can be
used for testing developments, creating training environments and investigating
production support issues. Embracing DSM and the just what I need, when I need it
methodology can also realise massive disk space savings.

The Challenge
Information is critical to the success of any business. Companies running SAP may
have all their most critical business data in the production system, which in the early
years of an SAP installation could be copied back to training and other pre-productive
systems on a regular basis using client or system copies. This results in potentially
sensitive data being available on non-productive systems that often have lower
security levels. As the size of the database increases, so does the cost and time
required to carry out these refreshes. For large organisations, client copies from a
production system become an impossibility and system refreshes become far less
appealing, as disk space increases dramatically for all the non-production systems.

Organisations either invest more resources in providing refreshes or increase the

period between each refresh. This results in higher direct costs or a lower standard of
test and training data, with all the incurred hidden costs. It is also not advisable to
perform client or system copies on the development master systems. This means
that developers working on new programs have to work with manually created data
before they are able to transport to a production or pre-production system. Even in a
system which has been recently refreshed it may not be possible to find transactional
data which exactly matches a production support issue. This situation leads to a
burden on support, training, and development teams, to create their own data, the
validity of which can undermine the test or development.

A New Methodology
In a pre-production system which is 6 months old, how much of that data will be used
before the next system refresh? How much of it will never be used, but will take up
disk space and be backed up every week? If there is a production issue on
transactional data the support person must first validate the master data before they
can even begin to recreate the transactional data to test the issue. Has any of the
master data on the source system been changed since the system copy was taken?
Has someone else made changes on the test system for another issue? Once this
has been checked for all related master data the transactional data needs to be
manually keyed. If the first attempt doesn’t fix the problem, the transactional data

© 2006 EPI-USE Systems Limited. All rights reserved 2

 Efficient replication of SAP
EPI-USE Data Sync
Business Objects to pre-
Manager
production systems

must be keyed again. In some cases the document being tested is dependant upon
previous documents, which must be created first.

A customising client copy uses a few hundred megabytes in an SAP system, and can
usually be created in under two hours. Data Sync Manager (DSM) empowers users
and super users to transfer ‘Just what I need, when I need it’. This may be for
example, a Sales order which is causing a production support issue, a selection of
material master records for a training course, or a selection of employees to test a
new report. A wide range of objects from FI, HR, and Logistics are available to
transfer.

DSM allows the user to select the main object for the transfer, and then the
integration objects which may also be of interest. In the example of the Sales Order
for a production support fix, the user will want the material and the customer which
are required by the Sales Order. DSM can also transfer transactional objects with
selections of the preceding and subsequent documents. This allows the user to test
the particular part of the process flow where the issue is occurring from.

Once the client has reached a certain size, it can be deleted, and a new client
created in the same way. A master client can be preserved with no application data,
which means the whole system could easily be kept under 100GB. Multiple clients
could also be used to provide separate environments for each functional area, or just
HR dedicated clients where data needs to be stored that is unscrambled.

The cost savings on disk space can be easily calculated but what price can be
placed on swift resolution of Production support issues and well trained staff across
the organisation?

DSM for ERP Architecture

DSM has been developed in ABAP by a team of highly skilled developers with a
wealth of SAP experience, across all modules. The installation takes place via a
standard transport, and the initial set up takes less than a day. Organisations across
the globe use SAP in many different ways, and the same is true of Data Sync
Manager. There are many controls within the administration settings, and via SAP
authorisations. Each organisation can decide how to deploy DSM in line with their
existing SAP authorisation concept.

SAP master data, transactional data, scenarios (document flows), and hierarchical
data can be transferred via RFC, or by exporting the data to a file and then importing
that file into the target system. File syncs may be preferable for larger volumes of
data, and provide the ability to re-import the same data repeatedly. This is particularly
important for training environments where course material can be created explicitly
naming the master data objects for the delegates to process. At the end of the course
the file can be imported again, with the ‘overwrite’ option set, and the same training
scripts used again with new delegates.

© 2006 EPI-USE Systems Limited. All rights reserved. 3

 Efficient replication of SAP
EPI-USE Data Sync
Business Objects to pre-
Manager
production systems

Standard SAP authorisations are checked on the source system. If a user cannot
display a particular business object on the source system they will not be able to
transfer it via DSM, regardless of their DSM permissions. An Authorization object
specific to DSM determines which business objects a user can export and import on
a given system.

An integral part of the DSM product is the Business Object Workbench. This defines
the business objects technically, their relationship to other business objects, and what
conversions are available. DSM provides conversions on some objects, for example,
scrambling the names of Employees, clearing credit card details on Sales Orders,
and clearing bank account details on Customers. This functionality provides the
option to prevent users who have access to the target system, from seeing sensitive
information, by removing or scrambling specific data. The Business Object
Workbench allows organisations to create their own conversions.

There are four types of users within DSM – User, Super User, Administrator, and
Developer. A User can transfer data using a Template created by a Super User in
their respective user group. A Template is similar to a program variant but can be
locked down to restrict selections a User can make. A Super User can create or run
templates, or alternatively select a main object, build a sync and execute it. The
Administrator is responsible for the settings and controls available within DSM. This
includes determining which clients are import/export clients, where files can be
exported to, plus of course which users are assigned to which user group. The
Administrator also has access to a range of reporting functionality within the tool. The
Developer can add custom tables to business objects, create new conversions on
business objects, or develop their own custom business objects to transfer data.

© 2006 EPI-USE Systems Limited. All rights reserved. 4

 Efficient replication of SAP
EPI-USE Data Sync
Business Objects to pre-
Manager
production systems

In all regions there are compliance requirements for storing data. The conversion
functionality in DSM allows a Developer to create conversions using constants,
clearing fields which are part of the object, an aggregate conversion based on data in
the transfer, or finally, via a user exit. This allows any conversion logic which can be
coded in ABAP to be used to modify data when it is transferred. DSM provides a
conversion which takes an Employee’s date of birth and uses this to generate a new
first and last name. Developers could code a completely different logic for defining a
new name and plug this into the provided user exit. It is also possible to lock down
conversions such that they will always be used, and not an optional choice of the
user. This could be particularly beneficial for Sarbanes Oxley compliance in the US,
or the Data Protection Act in the UK.

Process Technology
Data syncs can be executed in the foreground or set to run in the background, for
which standard SAP scheduling options are available. This allows large transfers to
be executed at off-peak hours. It is also possible to schedule the background job to
be periodic, which is beneficial for refreshing training scenarios. DSM can utilise
multiple background processes, for either transfer method. RFC uses Asynchronous
RFC to further increase the speed of the transfer. The number of processes and the
maximum number of objects to be synced can be set per client and/or per user to
prevent abuse, or overloading of the system. This is one of the options available to
the administrator.

When defining new business objects in the Business Object Workbench, the EPI-
USE developers aim to make use of BAPI's or standard SAP update function
modules to insert the object on the target system. This is especially important when
inserting transactional data, due to calculations that must be executed and balances
that need to be updated. For situations where a suitable BAPI or standard SAP
update function module is not available, DSM’s Object Definition Logic (ODL)
technology is used to ensure integrity when inserting business objects with OpenSQL
statements. DSM’s ODL technology ensures that referential integrity (foreign key
relationships), number ranges and logical system references are correctly maintained
in the target system. The ODL technology also employs SAP locking (enqueue)
functionality to ensure consistent data reads on both systems, and rollbacks to keep
a consistent state on the target system even in the event of a system error during the
sync. DSM has also been developed using the latest object orientation features of
SAP’s ABAP Objects language and as a result is fully Unicode compliant.

The DSM transfer layer transparently handles any codepage differences when
transferring data between SAP systems. This functionality also permits the transfer of
data between Unicode and non-Unicode SAP systems, as well as binary
incompatible (little-endian versus big-endian) systems.

If there are differences in the structures of tables between the systems, DSM can
map the data to be able to transfer objects. This can be beneficial when
developments are being created in pre-production systems, but is especially useful
when support packages have been applied to some systems but not moved through
to Production.

© 2006 EPI-USE Systems Limited. All rights reserved. 5

 Efficient replication of SAP
EPI-USE Data Sync
Business Objects to pre-
Manager
production systems

Summary
In this paper we have discussed how DSM gives users the power to transfer ‘just
what I need when I need it’, how the tool achieves this, and some of the wider
methodologies organisations are able to employ with DSM.

There are several major benefits enjoyed by DSM customers all around the world –

• Landscape optimisation, reclaiming disk space no longer required

• Accurate, up-to-date data at the users finger tips for testing and support
• Well defined training data which can be refreshed at anytime
• Protection of sensitive data on non-production systems
• Reduced reliance on over-stretched basis teams to provide system refreshes
• Increased flexibility to provide clients for dedicated projects
• Ability to clone master and transactional data even on the same client
• Shorter turn around times on production support fixes

Whether your organisation is ready to embrace the ‘Just what I need, when I need It’
methodology, or just wants the benefit of taking real data back from production, DSM
is the most cost effective solution. For more information or to arrange a
demonstration or evaluation please contact your local EPI-USE office –

www.epiuse.com

© 2006 EPI-USE Systems Limited. All rights reserved. 6