SAP Note 18727 - Client control in Release 3.0

Symptom:

Questions on connecting the Customizing maintenance to the transport system: How can the connection be controlled client by client?

Cause and prerequisites

This requires knowledge of new functionality.

Solution

Client control - extension to client table T000.

Description.

In 3.0, the Customizing maintenance was connected to the transport system. This means that from now on all changes to Customizing settings can be recorded in a change order (previous name: transport order). The numerous changes to settings parameters which are made during a Customizing project now do not need to be carefully noted and then transported again afterwards. The transports of a Customizer or Customizing team are now automatically recorded.
Transporting the Customizing settings to another system is hence already fully prepared and only requires the release of the transport order. The same applies to transfers in other client in the same system, since there is a dedicated tool available here for copying a client.
But it is not wanted in each case that every single change in the system is recorded. Hence in many systems, there are test, training or demonstration clients in addition to the productive client. Recording the changes here would be completely inappropriate and bothering. In the extreme case, it would even lead to an unintentional transport and hence could lead to the destruction of another target client.

To be able to regulate these partially contradictory requirements clearly and easily, the client in Release 3.0 was extended by corresponding operative characteristics that can be maintained in table T000:

• Role of the client:
  Specification of whether it is a productive, test, training, demonstration or Customizing client.

• Level of recording:
  The recording can be requested for each client. Chnages can also be totally prohibited, as for the system changeability in the Workbench Organizer.

Please note:

The activation of the transport connection for a chosen client only has an effect on changes to its client-dependent Customizing settings, but not on client-independent changes. These are always recorded together with changes to Repository objects (programs, screens,...) and do not require any client-dependent specification in table T000 (which would, of course, be contradictory).

To make this difference more transparent, a new transport type of the order Customizing was implemented for 3.0, which now exists in addition to (normal) change orders for Repository objects and cross-client Customizing. Customizing orders (order category CUST) only contain client-dependent objects, while system orders (category SYST) contain any objects, as is already the case in previous releases.

If you activate the transport recording in your client, mainly Customizing orders are created. It is then ensured that the result of a Customizing project can be safely transported to the target client of another system without affecting another client there.

The assurance of restricting the effects to only one client cannot be given for system transports. These would now have to be checked before importing cross-client objects. If client-independent objects are included in this, a comparison of the corresponding settings in the source and target systems would be useful to be able to estimate the effect on all the other clients.

Further control characteristics of the client are:

• Logon block indicator which is set by a currently running client copy in the target client.
  It is thus achieved that working in the target client is not possible during the client copy. The (super) users SAP* and DDIC are always permitted access, other regular users receive a corresponding message when attempting to log on.

• Client cascade block.
  Many tables are usually cascaded in all customer clients during an upgrade by SAP. This is not useful in certain cases, namely if the client should not participate in the usual SAP standard, for example, in the case of a complete inhouse development or a test client with very dedicated contents (for example, EarlyWatch client 066). For safety reasons, setting the cascade block is only allowed for user DDIC to prevent a regular customer client accidentally becoming incomplete with an upgrade.

• Targetted permission for executing CATT processes.
  Recorded test processes are started again by executing CATT processes (Computer Aided Test Tool). Since this naturally also makes changes to the database, this should be definable as a characteristic of a client.