Function documentationDowngrade Protection Locate this document in the navigation structure

 

The downgrade protection function tracks objects as stored in their transport requests, and reports conflicts when an object is saved in more than two transport requests targeting one production system. This applies to all managed development systems and clients for which the cross-system object lock is active.

Note Note

Downgrade protection is available only for ABAP systems.

End of the note.

Prerequisites

  • You have configured downgrade protection and the cross-system object lock in Customizing under   SAP Solution Manager   Capabilities   Change Management   Extended Configuration   Cross-System Object Lock and Downgrade Protection  .

    Note Note

    In Customizing, you can, for example, configure the conflict criticality for each check type and the systems that should bypass downgrade protection.

    End of the note.

  • If you want to use the predecessor check and the imminent check, you have installed and configured the central Change and Transport System plug-in on the managed systems (including development, quality assurance, and production systems). For more information, see SAP Note 1674628.

  • You have run the RSCTS_OBJ_TRACK_ADD report for transport requests that were created before using SAP Solution Manager 7.1 Support Package 05.

Features

  • The Downgrade Protection assignment block in the WebClient UI is available for project and maintenance cycles and for change documents. Whenever the system detects a conflict, it is displayed in the assignment block. For more information, see Using the Downgrade Protection Assignment Block.

  • There are two options to trigger downgrade checks:

    • Manually

      You can trigger downgrade checks from the Downgrade Protection assignment block.

    • Automatically

      Downgrade checks are triggered automatically when releasing transport requests, importing a transport, or when reassigning a change document.

  • You can also trigger a downgrade check from a task list. In case of a conflict, the system displays a dialog box notifying the user about the conflict and the cancelation of the operation. A link to the change cycle document in the WebClient UI is provided where the conflicts can be checked and handled.

Downgrade Check Types

The following downgrade checks can be performed by the system:

  • Release check

    The downgrade protection can detect conflicts on transport request release for objects in transport requests. The conflicts are the same as those displayed by the cross-system object lock when saving the objects to the transport requests. When the system finds conflicts, the release is Canceled and application log entries are added to reflect this. The conflict check results are displayed in the Downgrade Protection assignment block. If you want to ignore the conflicts and restart the release, you can check the results on the assignment block and ignore them. Then you can start the release again.

  • Predecessor check

    The system can detect conflicting predecessors, that is, preceding transport requests containing conflicts, at the time of importing transport requests or transports of copies to the production system or the quality assurance system. If such a conflict is detected and the check result is not ignored, the import is canceled and application log entries are created to reflect this. You can also ignore the conflicts on the Downgrade Protection assignment block and restart the import if you wish. Instead of ignoring the conflicts, you can consider importing the older transport request first, and importing the newer transport afterwards.

  • Reassign check

    The system performs this check when you reassign a change document or assign or decouple transport requests in a change document. It displays potential conflicts of the transport request(s) involved. You can choose to cancel or continue. If you continue, the operation goes on and an application log entry is added to reflect the ignoring of the conflicts

  • Imminent check

    The system can detect impending (imminent) downgrade conflicts when transport requests are imported. This kind of conflict is an actual downgrade that would happen if you ignore the conflict. The system displays the check result on the Downgrade Protection assignment block. If the check result is not ignored, the system cancels the import and application log entries are created to reflect this.

    Note Note

    We recommend to not ignore the imminent downgrade conflicts on the Downgrade Protection assignment block and restart the import. Instead, SAP recommends to choose one of the following options:

    • Perform a project import that imports all the transport requests in the correct order, including the newer request and its predecessor (only when the newer request is still included in the project import)

    • Import by ignoring predecessors via setting appropriate transport management system (TMS) options or using transaction STMS

    End of the note.

Activities

The following graphic shows the user and system activities during the downgrade protection process.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

Downgrade Protection Process