SAP TechEd Day 2

I noticed a couple weeks back that www.sap.com shows pages ending in .aspx!  Today I ran into a guy who knows the web master and says the guy loves Microsoft technology.  I think it is funny and fantastic that SAP is running their home page on ASP.Net!  Love it.

Session summaries for TechEd Day 2 - Oct 6, 2004

CI205 - High Availability for SAP Solutions - I arrived in the second half, covered the typical stuff - what is high availability, existing solutions.  Explained Windows Server Clustering for SAP DB and Central Instance Servers.

• Enqueue Replication - There was only one slide on the 'Enqueue Replication' technologies that SAP is offering to create redundant Central Instances - this technology essentially involves replicating the enqueue table from the CI to a secondary application server.  We are interested in using this in tandem with SQL Server 2005 Data Mirroring to create a high availability in our R/3 core environment.  See note 524816.
• Soft shutdown: They covered 'soft shutdown' of SAP Application servers using TA/command SMMS (not sure what TA is).  This sets a server so that it no longer services new requests to drain activity off and remove it from the system or reboot it.  We do this today by removing a server from the Logon Group (tcode: SMLG). 
• Rolling Kernel Upgrades: They discussed rolling kernel upgrades where you can replace 4.6D kernel or higher on one server at a time in tandem with the soft shutdown described above to upgrade kernels.  The kernels have to compatible (they didn't say how to tell).
• Applying Support Packages with Minimal Downtime: Support packages can be imported using a shadow import during uptime and then switching during downtime.  Supposed to reduce downtime by 70%.  I discussed this with our Basis Support Pack guy, and he said we tried using it during our last quarterly release and it did not help much.  He also stated that it has the drawback that in case of a failure of importing SPs, you have to revert to a backup taken prior to starting the shadow import.  This is really bad since the system could have new transactions during the uptime portion!
• Customer Based Upgrade process: they discussed a new upgrade procedure where a test copy of production is made, the 'packaged' upgrade is run against the copy, and the results are exported in a package.  The test system is then refreshed again from production and the package applied as a 'customer specific' upgrade.  After complete testing this package can then be applied to the production system.
• Outlook: End of Daylight Saving Time - They had one conceptual slide that described eliminating the downtime caused by daylight savings time switches.  There was no technical detail, but the statement  was 'Save time continuity by stretching system time in the 'double hour'.   Very future looking.  Not sure how they would accomplish this.

NW205 - Interoperability of SAP NetWeaver and Microsoft .Net - Thomas Meigen of SAP described the state of the interop deal between Microsoft and SAP.  He went into some detail on the Portal Development Kit for .Net (see yesterday's post), and discussed the roadmap. The list of focus areas or products he described:

• SAP .Net Connector 2.0 - released last week - supports both Visual Basic.Net and C#, SAP systems can be registered in Visual Studio Server Explorer- can drag and drop connections into the designer, full support of the BAPI object models and multiple nest result sets (?)
• Web Services collaboration
• Biztalk and XI integration will be through standards based messaging - no special adapters between the products seem necessary or are planned.
• Active Directory  and SSO - this is already delivered broadly, but they need to create an interop layer to allow the Enterprise Portal to authenticate against other MS products such as Exchange in order to host Outlook Web Access within the EP.
• Smart Client Sample Applications - in tandem with Longhorn Avalon APIs they are planning some type of SAP UIs (or a completely new SAPGUI type UI?) for Longhorn
• Repository Manager for Sharepoint/Exchange - I don't understand exactly what this means - he was not clear - something about repository support within Enterprise Portal?
• Windows and SQL Server - ongoing platform support
• Content Management server - MS to provide CMS iView for Business Managers and Users to manage portal content with CMS in 2005(?)
• CTSC - Collaboration Technology Support Center - staffed by 2 SAP and 2 MS employees to act as a center of guidance and integration between customers, sales, consulting, and development.