Enhancements Packs and NetWeaver Versioning ? Clarifying the Relationships
Posted by Paul Desmond on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 ? Leave a Comment?
In the SAP world, each Enhancement Pack is inextricably linked to the SAP NetWeaver stack upon it runs. But if you look solely at the version numbers, you will be forgiven if you run into confusion about which NetWeaver stack is most appropriate for any given Enhancement Pack.? Here?s the inside scoop.
As we?ve covered previously, the NetWeaver code lines essentially split some years ago. Today, one line ? NetWeaver 7.0x ? runs directly within the SAP Business Suite, meaning ERP, CRM, Suppler Relationship Management (SRM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM).? Another code line ? NetWeaver 7.x0 ? is used with ?standalone? NetWeaver applications such as Business Warehouse (BW), Portals, Business Process Management (BPM) and the Composition Environment (CE).
The first NetWeaver Enhancement Pack in the 7.0x line ? NetWeaver 7.01 ? started unrestricted shipping in March 2009. ?Prior to that, SAP delivered new NetWeaver functionality in some, but not all, of its Support Packages.? The problem with this approach is that it meant customers who may only want legal changes and bug fixes were getting new functionality as well.? NetWeaver Enhancement Packages, on the other hand, include new functionality that corresponds directly to functionality in a given Business Suite release or Enhancement Pack.
So, how do you make sure you?re on the correct version of the NetWeaver 7.0x code line for any given Business Suite application?? SAP makes that pretty easy; the appropriate NetWeaver code is included with the Enhancement Pack.
If you?re running ERP 6.0 EhP 4, CRM 7.0 or SRM 7.0, they all run on NetWeaver 7.01.
The recently released Business Suite 7 Innovations 2010 package takes everything up a notch. The package includes ERP 6.0 EhP 5, CRM 7.0 EhP 1 and SRM 7.0 EhP 1 and they all run on NetWeaver 7.0 EhP 2, also known as NetWeaver 7.02. (BS 7 Innovations 2010 went into ramp-up in December of 2010 and should come out of ramp-up at the end of June 2011)
As for the 7.x0 line that runs with the standalone NetWeaver applications, the current version is 7.30.? That version incorporates the NetWeaver code line that was previously dedicated to the NetWeaver Composition Environment (CE), reducing the number of lines from three to two.
As explained in our previous post on the issue, on the ABAP side, little difference exists between the 7.x0 and 7.0x code lines because SAP likes to keep them in sync so all products play nicely with one another.? On the Java side, things may be different. Because only standalone applications leverage the Java-based tools, there?s no need to replicate enhancements made to the Java-based NetWeaver code line on the ABAP side.
For a more exhaustive explanation of the history of the NetWeaver code lines, check out the article by SAP?s Thomas Jung on page 10 of this issue of SAP Mentors Quarterly.
ERP Executive thanks Thomas Jung, a solution architect working in SAP technology solution management at SAP Labs, for his contributions to this article.? Read his blog here . Thomas is also a member of the Enterprise Geeks, who frequently blog and podcast on SAP development topics.
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