Workflow Upgrade issues (4.6c to ECC 6)

[Mike Gambier]

Gijs,
 
We will have millions of active instances running when we bring the system down to upgrade it. There's no way we will be able to shut them down and restart, despite the SAP white paper suggesting that we really should. We have about 100 WF definitions to check...
 
Consequently we're having to test how well they perform in an upgraded environment before we do it for real. Which means testing lots of areas: triggering events event queued or otherwise & binding (which works differently in ECC 6), deadlines (different again in ECC 6), event listeners (which are shifted to a completely different table), complex alternate bindings, dialog work items being executed & terminating events, forks, loops, dynamic steps and, of course, general tRFC/ARFCSSTATE/feedback errors.Whilst it's always nice to see new OO stuff coming through as part of the upgrade, the new versions of the Workflow service jobs are proving to be a bit hard to predict in how they do things. So we're waiting to see how they cope at volume too.
 
By the time we go live we'll have gone through several full blown upgrade simulations. All of which means a lot of effort. Hence the pain...
 
That and 4 High Priority OSS Messages already and you can see where I'm coming from. Still, it's educational and quite fun to dig around in the new stuff :)
 
MGT


From: gijs at houtzagers.comTo: sap-wug at mit.eduSubject: RE: Workflow Upgrade issues (4.6c to ECC 6)Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:46:25 +0200








Hi Mike,
Could you elaborate on the painful stuff you were confronted by?
Regards
 

Gijs Houtzagers
Principal Consultant
 
Kirkman Company B.V.
Amsterdamsestraatweg 40
3743 DT  Baarn
The Netherlands
 
T +31 (0)88 40 40 400
F +31 (0)88 40 40 499
www.kirkmancompany.com
  
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From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Mike GambierSent: dinsdag 17 juni 2008 17:12To: SAP Workflow Users' GroupSubject: Workflow Upgrade issues (4.6c to ECC 6)
 
Hi, We're currently struggling through a rather painful upgrade process from 4.6c to ECC 6 and we've hit a few Workflow mines. Despite several high priority OSS Messages the end result from SAP so far as been a fairly poor acknowledgement of issues that need to be addressed manually, culminating in OSS Note 1175535.Basically we have 4 known faults at the moment. Two relating to changes not coming across from 4.6c into ECC 6 based around Workflow Container Elements and Event Linkages, which I can quite understand as the target tables ahve shifted in ECC 6. But the other two point to problems in SAP's 'mapping' process where they convert 4.6c (or older) definitions into ECC 6 syntax (Kernel 700+). These issues are: 1. Multiline Table handling - to use these properly in loops and dynamic steps it seems you now have to use a new &WF_PARFOREACH_INDEX& element that only becomes available after 4.6c They did suggest trying a dodgy binding switch as implemented by OSS Message 1083317, which mostly works for active instances but only as long as the 'Change Release' value on the WF version remains equal to or lower than '46C'. Not all that useful if the instances are on the current active version and that definition is then activated in the ECC 6 environment. But that doesn't actually fix the definition syntax going forward anyway. 2. Condition binding after 4.6c introduces a {TYPE=...} additional statement in SWDSCONDEF so that, for example, a hard-coded string like '31.12.9999' can be converted into a date variable at runtime to compare against an object date property. Prior to 4.6c this statement did not exist. Now it is required or else the binding is considered to be erroneous and a syntax error will result. Has anyone esle come across upgrade-related issues other than these? Regards, Mike GT 



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