Change Recording for Non-ABAP Applications

You can use change recording to record information about changes to development objects that have not yet been transported in the non-ABAP development systems of your system landscape and to manage changes. Creation, change, and delete procedures are recorded in changelists. Every element of a changelist corresponds to a change version of a development object in your non-ABAP development system.

Using the display of the change versions in the Change Organizer, you can see at all times which changes were made by whom and at what time.

In the Change Organizer you can also set up transports that include all changes of all users that have not yet been transported or only those of a specific user. In addition, you can transport these changes to other systems. This ensures that your own changes are not activated by another user by accident. With the change recording you can also easily ensure that no changed objects are omitted from the transport and that changes are transported completely.

Depending on your tasks you can use the Change Organizer for different purposes:

• Development teams can use the Change Organizer to view their own changelists, edit them, and to follow their life cycle.

• Quality managers can use the Change Organizer as a tool for monitoring development activities. In this way you can see who in the development team made which changes and transported them.

• Project managers can use the Change Organizer to transfer development tasks to changelists and to distribute these to members of a development team.

Change recording thus functions as a complete tool that supports both development teams and project leaders in their work, as well as making quality assurance easier.

The following graphic shows the Change Organizer in combination with the Transport Organizer in an example landscape. The system landscape consists of a CTS system and a Portal development system, a Portal test system, and a Portal productive system. The Change Organizer is integrated into the development system and communicates with the Transport Organizer in the CTS system. All transport requests are forwarded using Deploy Web Service and imported into the test and productive systems.

• Non-ABAP development system: SAP NetWeaver 7.3 with usage type EP Core - Application Portal

• CTS System: SAP enhancement package 1 for SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Support Package 7 ABAP + Java

• Change recording is activated in your non-ABAP development system.

  Caution

  Activate change recording for all required subtrees at the start of your development activity and keep activated. Remember that changes are not recorded when change recording is deactivated. If you activate change recording during a running development activity, there is the risk that the data status is inconsistent in the target system.

  Recommendation

  If you want to activate change recording at a later time during the running development activity, first manually transport the changes that have already been made to the subtree for which you want to record changes. This produces the current status in the target system and avoids inconsistent data statuses.

  For more information, see the documentation of SAP NetWeaver Portal.

The following graphic represents the life cycle of a changelist from the different options for creating it through to releasing it. It also gives you a step-by-step overview of how you can use the Change Organizer.

1. Create Changelists

   With changelists you can manage changes to development objects and attach them to a transport request together. You can create changelists of different types:

   • You can create changes lists manually in the Change Organizer ( 1.A ).

     For more information: Creating Changelists

   • If a development object ( 2 ) is created in a development workbench, this is defined in a changelist. Either the changelist that was already selected in the Change Organizer as the default is used for this or a new changelist is created automatically ( 1.B ).

     Note

     You can control this automation using system settings in SAP NetWeaver Administrator.

     For more information: Configuring the Change Organizer

     For more information on how to preselect changelists, see Preselecting Changelists .

2. Modify or Create Development Objects

   Development objects are created and modified in the development workbench in your system landscape. These changes are recorded as change versions in changelists. In changelists, change versions where the content is dependent are summarized as procedures. Procedures with content dependencies are grouped as related procedures.

3. Modify Changelists (Optional)

   In the Change Organizer you can modify changelists and the change versions that they contain as long as the changelists have the status Open .

   For more information: Modifying Changelists

4. Activate Changelists

   If you do not want to make any further changes to a changelist, activate this changelist. The change versions that it contains can then no longer be changed, moved, or deleted. However, the related development objects can be edited again without conflict since they are no longer part of an open changelist.

   The most up-to-date change versions at the time of activation are used when transporting a changelist. Aside from these change versions, information about the changelist itself is retained and delivered with the transport.

   A changelist must have status Active to be able to attach it to a transport request.

   For more information: Activating Changelists

5. Attach Changelists to Transport Requests or Download Export File

   You have the following options for transporting an active changelist:

   • Attach the changelist to a transport request and use the Change Organizer to transport it. The changelist then has status Attached .

     For more information: Attaching Changelists to Transport Requests

   • Download the export file of the changelist and transport it manually using the Import Service in the connected development system. You do not need a transport request.

     For more information: Transporting the Export File of a Changelist

   When you attach a changelist to a transport request, it is possible for consistency reasons that older, previously-active changelists (predecessor changelists) are automatically attached as well. For more information about dependencies between changelists, see Ensuring Consistency when Transporting Changelists .

6. Release Transport Requests

   In the Transport Organizer you can release the transport request with your changelists for transport through your system landscape.

   For more information: Transporting Non-ABAP Objects in the Change and Transport System .