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Use

SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure (NWDI) lets you set up maintenance landscapes for multiple releases of your software. Each maintenance track produces new locations for the source code of your software. If you need to correct an error in an older release, you may need to do it in multiple tracks to avoid the same error popping up over and over again.

To stop you having to correct errors more than once, NWDI includes a back transport function that you can use to distribute source code changes to all relevant locations (NWDI systems).

Back Transport Connections

Within a track, a back transport connection is configured automatically between the Development and Consolidation systems. This means that corrections in the consolidation system are transported automatically into the development system.

Note

Automatic back transports are particularly useful if you run your complete software lifecycle in a single track, and use the consolidation system for making corrections to the production state of your software. In more complex landscapes (in which a release is developed in multiple tracks), corrections should be made in the consolidation system only in exceptional cases.

For back transports between tracks, you need to configure track connections with the type Repair (see also Track Connections ).

The following figure shows you the back transport connections between two tracks. (Since the Test and Production systems are not source code locations, they are not shown, to simplify the figure.)

Track 1 and track 2 are connected by a connection with the type Transport . This means that source code from track 1 is transported into track 2. There is also a connection with the type Repair between track 2 and track 1. This means that any corrections made in the development system or consolidation system of track 2 are transported back to track 1, after they have been released.

Process Flow of a Back Transport

Back Transport Between Tracks

  1. NWDI triggers the back transport as soon you release activities in the follow-on track.

    Note

    Back transports are triggered when you release activities in both development systems and consolidation systems.

  2. The released change requests then appear in the import queue of the target track.

  3. You import the change requests into the development system of the target track. A repository import is used to import the corrections into the inactive workspace. There is no activation and no deployment.

    Note

    The import into the inactive workspace protects the content of the active workspace. This gives developers the chance to remove any conflicts or inconsistencies before they cause errors in the active workspace. To make it easier to resolve conflicts and troubleshoot problems, we recommend that you copy corrections from maintenance tracks to the development track as often as possible.

  4. In the conflict view in the Development Configuration Perspective in NW Developer Studio, check whether the import caused any conflicts and resolve them.

  5. Check in the new activities that have been created.

  6. Then go to Activation View and check whether the conflict resolution activities have the correct content; also check whether the activities of a back transport have the correct content. If necessary, correct the inactive state of the software with further activities.

    Note

    Any activities that originate from a back transport are flagged with a special decorator under Activation View in NW Developer Studio.

  7. Activate the activities.

    Note

    Bundle the correction activity and the matching conflict resolutions in a change request. This removes the conflicts in the follow-on systems.

Back Transport Within a Track

  1. NWDI triggers the back transport as soon you release activities in the follow-on consolidation system.

  2. The released change requests then appear in the import queue of the development system.

  3. The subsequent steps are the same as for a back transport between tracks.

Cascading Back Transports

When you use transport connections and repair connections to construct a complex track landscape, you can cascade back transports throughout the landscape, right back to the initial track. The following figure shows an example of this.

In the example shown here, the correction is first forwarded from track 3 to track 2. The import into development system DEV of track 2 integrates the correction into the inactive workspace. After you activate and release the correction, a back transport to track 1 is triggered and the correction is placed in the import queue of the development system.