Show TOC

 Activities Following Upgrades

Use

When you upgrade your system to a new release, all the Customizing settings made in the previous release are automatically converted to the new functional environment and can be used as before. However, this cannot always be ensured in the case of customer enhancements for characteristic derivation. It is therefore recommended that you test these enhancements to make sure that they still work properly.

Original Release 3.x

Customer Enhancement COPA0001, Components 001 and 002

The customer enhancement COPA0001, components 001 and 002 (exit in characteristic derivation) are no longer supported from Release 4.x. However, they are still accessed in the new release and are therefore still functional in principle.

Following an upgrade, the system automatically checks whether this customer enhancement was active. If so, derivation steps are automatically created at the beginning and the end of the derivation strategy, so that the enhancement is still accessed.

However, you should observe the following recommendations to check whether the logic programmed in the enhancement is still necessary in the new release.

  1. First check whether you can replace the enhancements using the new standard derivation types.

  2. You should avoid using customer enhancements wherever you do not absolutely require them. Since normal Customizing settings are automatically compatible without the need for manual changes, you will no longer need to check the compatibility in future releases.

  3. If you cannot replace the enhancements, specify the source and target fields more precisely and, if desired, limit them further.

When you upgrade to a new release, all possible fields are listed by default as source and target fields. You may be able to achieve significantly better performance by limiting the fields. Fewer fields need to be transferred to the customer enhancement, and the system does not have to recognize as many relationships between source and target fields (which, for example, can be used to optimize performance in summarization levels).

At the same time, you should consider whether you can switch over to the new component 003 of customer enhancement COPA0001 and divide it into individual steps. For more information on this, see the documentation for enhancement COPA0001 .

Original Release 2.x and 3.x

Compatibility of Customer Programs With Characteristic Derivation

Technically, derivation of characteristic values was completely reprogrammed in Release 4.0A. Both the data model - together with its tables - and the maintenance transactions are entirely new and have no connection with the technique used through Release 3.1.

If you have created user-defined programs or batch-inputs for derivation, you may need to redesign these.

Check whether you have any

  • Your own programs that read control tables TKEAS, TKEA1, TKEA2, TKEAT or TKEAN

  • Your own programs that read the old tables for derivation rules (tables K9* )

  • Batch-input programs that use the old transaction "Change Derivation Rules"

These programs or batch-inputs no longer work in Release 4.0A and higher and therefore need to be modified.

If you have programs that write derivation rule entries directly into tables K9*, you should check whether you cannot replace this using the batch-input technique. This will ensure that the highly complex consistency checks are carried out in the new release.