Okay, The big question of SAP Upgrade. How to have a successful SAP ECC Upgrade?. Today, we are going to discuss each and every steps involved in a successful upgrade and provide you with links and resources to know the complete process of upgrade.

Types of Upgrade

SAP Has come up with three different types of upgrade.

Technical Upgrade: This is considered to be the fastest upgrade and will not distribute any of the existing business processes.
Functional Upgrade: This starts on the Technical Upgrade. It provides the option to implement additional functionalities in all the various sap modules. This upgrade step provides you with the ability to convert many of the custom process es into a standard one. Well, SAP is smarter and will of course, make it more robust by adding many additional functions.
Strategic Upgrade : This is driven by enterprise SOA to provide more flexibility to business process innovation.

How does an upgrade take place?

• Basis team reviews all the steps.
• Run the SAPUP tool.
• You got to complete the modification adjustments using SPDD and SPAU.
  • what are SPDD and SPAU? SPDD Adjustments are the adjustments to the dictionary objects which had inconsistencies in it during or after the upgrade. Some SPDD adjustments have to be done between the SAP Upgrades. SPAU are the adjustments carried out by the programs. What adjustments? Many times, you tend to modify the standard program and now the sap tries to upgrade the same program. it fails because it does not know where exactly to insert the new piece of code. Hence, these adjustments have to be done through SPAU. I forgot to mention, SPDD and SPAU are transactions.
• The next step is with unicode conversion, Follow the link and you will know more.
• Then comes, taking care of your custom objects, there modifications, extended code check, regression testing…etc.

Where do we go from here. Here is a an Upgrade Guide for everyone and some faqs on the wiki, which will provide you with more insight and some tips and tricks.

Here is a step by step guide which will walk you through all the screens to do a successful upgrade from ECC 5 to ECC 6 on AIX. Download the manual on Upgrade – ECC 5.0 to ECC 6.0