Key Takeaway
Large organizations with a high volume of SAP changes often struggle with managing SAP transport sequencing. As landscapes grow more complex, transport sequencing issues can cause object conflicts, overwrites, failed releases, and production instability.
Discover how Rev-Trac, an automated SAP change management solution, addresses common transport sequencing issues to reduce risk and improve outcomes.
Why SAP transport sequencing becomes a risk
In large organizations, transport activity increases quickly. Multiple developers, parallel projects, BAU changes, and strict compliance are common.
Ensuring transports migrate in the correct order becomes critical.
Large organizations with a high volume of SAP changes, often face challenges managing transport sequencing. As landscapes grow more complex, ensuring transports migrate in the correct sequence becomes critical to achieving safe, successful production go-lives.
This burden frequently falls on the SAP BASIS team, who must balance:
- Day-to-day production support changes
- Project releases
- Delayed go-lives and Production downtime
- Downgrades in Production
Object conflicts in SAP transport sequencing
Object conflicts occur when multiple developers modify a common object in parallel.
How object conflicts happen
Example:
Developer A modifies a program (V1)
Developer B modifies the same program (V2)
If transported out of sequence, V1 could overwrite V2
How Rev-Trac prevents object conflicts
Rev-Trac’s three -part object conflict detection prevents these issues:
- Extended locking
Developers are alerted when attempting to modify a common object and may be required to seek approval from a Change Manager before proceeding
2. OOPS overtake protection
The system warns when transports are migrated out of sequence, such as migrating V2 to Production before V1 of the same object
3. OOPS overwrite protection
The system detects and warns of potential downgrades, such as migrating an older transport (V1) that would overwrite a newer version (V2) already in production
These features significantly reduce the risk of object overwrites and transport conflicts.
Change-specific dependencies
Rev-Trac Requests allow developers to control the sequence of transports within the scope of their own change.
Example:
- A program is migrated to QA
- The program and fails because required Data Dictionary objects were not included
- The missing objects are added to a subsequent transport
- The developer re-sequences the transports on the Rev-Trac Request so the Data Dictionary objects migrate first, and then the transport containing the program
Cross change, business process dependencies
Sometimes sequencing issues occur across different changes.
Example:
Two developers working on different changes
Developer B’s change is dependent on developer A’s change.
If Developer B’s change progresses to the target system, it can lead to import errors and broken functionality.
How Rev-Trac handles cross change, process dependencies
To prevent developer B from concluding his work and progressing his change before developer A’s change has arrived in the target system,
Rev-Trac provides transport dependencies, which can be set across Rev-Trac Requests. These are honoured when a user attempts to migrate the changes before the pre-requisite change and related transports.
This prevents the migration of dependent changes.
Cross change, cross application dependencies
In complex SAP environments, dependencies may span systems.
Example:
An SAP ECC change must be migrated to its target environment before a related BW change.
Rev-Trac handles this in two ways:
- By using source specific migration, a single Rev-Trac change ticket can manage transports and the transport target system migrations for both environments. This allows a single test script and a single migration approval for all transports. As a result, ECC changes are successfully migrated to their target system before the BW changes are migrated
- A dependent Rev-Trac change can reference the pre-requisite Rev-Trac change to ensure that status checks occur against the dependent request. This ensures that the operator of a BW change can’t approve the migration to production until the pre-requisite ECC change is in a status of “In Production”
In a scenario where different developers are required to operate in their respective environments, separate Rev-Trac change Requests can be used and option 2 becomes the alternative method.
There are several other less common and more complicated transport sequencing scenarios that may be experienced.
However, in all cases Rev-Trac has been able to assist and ensure successful and safe production go-lives.
FAQ: SAP transports sequencing
What is SAP transport sequencing?
SAP transport sequencing ensures transports are migrated to target systems in the correct order to prevent object conflicts, downgrades or Production instability.
Why is transport sequencing important?
Sequencing issues can cause:
- Object overwrites
- Production downtime
- Failed releases
What causes SAP transport conflicts?
Transport conflicts typically occur when:
- Multiple developers modify the same object
- Dependencies aren’t migrated first
- Cross-system changes are not coordinated
How does Rev-Trac solve sequencing issues?
- Extended locking
- Overtake and overwrite protection
- Dependency management
- Cross-change dependency enforcement
For more information on how Rev-Trac can help prevent SAP transport sequencing issues, contact one of our SAP change management experts.
