Typically when an organization deploys a large volume of changes to production there are many concerns around the sequencing/conflict of transports. These sequencing/conflict concerns can be divided into two major categories:
- Sequencing of SAP transports within a release
- Impact of excluded transports on a release
When using the Release Management Workbench, organizations no longer need to fear either of these concerns, as they are automatically managed by Rev-Trac.
Sequencing of SAP transports within a release
When transports are synchronized between the many changes and their release request, Rev-Trac uses its dynamic sequencing logic to determine the sequence for which the transports should be queued and migrated within the release.
The dynamic sequencing logic is as follows:
- Adjust sequence of SAP transports containing conflicting objects by release date and time
- Honor the change request sequence (which allows developers to specify a unique sequence within the same change ticket e.g. send data dictionary objects before program)
- Honor the transport dependencies (which allows developers to specify a desired sequence across different change requests)
This logic ensures that the SAP transports contained within a release are migrated in the correct sequence once approved for production.
When using the Release Management Workbench, organizations no longer need to fear either of these concerns, as they are automatically managed by Rev-Trac.
Impact of excluded SAP transports on a release
Object sequencing issues and dependencies can occur when changes are included in a release, but their dependent changes are accidentally omitted.
The Release Management Workbench provides a pre-emptive “Overtake and Overwrite” check, as well as a dependency check, which can be performed against the release.
The Overtake and Overwrite check will identify any out of sequence migrations that might occur as a result of introducing the wrong changes, or accidentally omitting changes from a release.
It becomes clear to a release manager which changes should be added or removed from a release in order to ensure the stability of the production environment.
In the same manner the dependency check will ensure that developer set dependencies are honored when the release is triggered for migration. The dependent change can be included or the dependee change can be removed from a request.
In additon to the pre-emptive checks, Rev-Trac will automatically trigger an Overtake and Overwrite check and a dependency check as the release is approved for any target system such as pre-production or production.
What will work for you?
There are many methods for managing releases in Rev-Trac. Feel free to reach out to our team to find out what the best approach to release management is for your organization.
