A first technical glimpse into Advanced Data Migration

When converting your Business Suite systems onto S/4HANA, you are faced with the question How to decide between a Greenfield and Brownfield S/4HANA transition. If you decide for a Brownfield conversion, then all your processes including their data, good or not so good, are converted, with all potential disadvantages and challenges. In comparison, if you decide for a Greenfield approach, this is a new start with optimized processes and the opportunity to migrate only good data. This also includes the option to consolidate systems:

In this blog I assume that you already got SAP Advanced Data Migration by BackOffice Associates (ADM) installed, but not connected to your to be converted SAP system yet.

To connect your to be converted SAP system to ADM, you start with importing 3 transports that come with your ADM installation. These can be found in directory:

C:Program Files (x86)BOADSPWebUserArea151a30b-2dd0-48ae-823d-d378e1ff5c05SAP_Transports

The files starting with K are the cofiles and therefore go into directory

C:usrsap        ranscofiles

On your to be converted SAP system.

The files that start with R are the data files and therefore go into directory

C:usrsap  ransdata

Respectively.

You add requests to the import queue with the Transport Management System (transaction STMS) – Import Overview (F5) – Display Import Queue (F8) – Extras – Other Requests – Add:

The resulting import queue should look as follows:

When importing each request via Request – Import (Ctrl+F11) please specify Options – Ignore Invalid Component Version:

Next, you create a target database In the ADM SQL Server owned by your ADM user with Database name dgSAP_ and initial sizes 1GB and 256MB for the tables and logs respectively:

Subsequently, you add this database in ADM under Admin – Data Sources and test the connection successfully:

With this you register the target in Collect – Targets:

And confirm it as a data source in Common – Configuration – Data Source Registry and test the connection successfully:

If not already done yet, you next install the ODBC driver for your to be converted SAP system database management system, add a System DSN for the target source and test the connection:

Subsequently, you add this database in ADM under Admin – Data Sources again and test the connection successfully:

As before, confirm it as a data source in Common – Configuration – Data Source Registry and test the connection successfully:

Now, go back to Collect – Targets, select your previous target and add your just created data source as a target source:

Next, provide the SAP Settings and test the SAP Connection:

Finally, you add the table that you would like to migrate and Build the Package:

To receive, in this case, the users in your system:

Of course, this is only the beginning. Next you would want to cleanse the data and populate a Greenfield system with it.