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brian_lawrence
Explorer

SAP CAR Installation


Foreword


SAP CAR has been around for a few years but not many companies have implemented it. I therefore thought it pertinent to explain the installation process of a SAP CAR system. It can be regarded as one of the more difficult installations that SAP has to offer as it involves a number of systems and is not as straight forward as a normal NetWeaver ABAP system installation.

Assumptions


This document is written for SAP Basis Consultants and I therefore assume a senior Basis level of skill. I also assume that your SLT and ECC systems are existing systems.

Landscape


The landscape in this document consist of three systems. An ECC system an SLT server (used to extract the data from ERP and to import it into a HANA database) and the CAR system built on a HANA database.

 



You will require the following additional documentation:




The following preparation was required on the ECC and SLT systems:


SAP SLT Replication server:



  • Component DMIS_CNT must be upgraded to DMIS 2011_1_731 SP11 on ERP and the same version on the SLT server.

    • If you upgrade the SLT system from DMIS 2010 to DMIS 2011 please ensure to install DMIS 2011 and all relevant support packages in one installation queue. (note 2525520)



  • Note 1605140 –

    • In order to guarantee correct behavior of SLT Server you need to ensure, that the DB2 database parameter ‚CUR_COMMIT‘ is set to 'ON'. (Installation Guide, 2015,p.7)



  • Note 2304552 to be installed on replication server only.

  • Note 2304817 to be installed on both source and replication server.


SAP ECC Server:



  • Note 2196323 - DRFOUT: Only valid current node assignments and article assignments are transferred during Article Hierarchy Replication - or upgrade to EA-RETAIL 606 SP17 (Installation Guide, 2015,p.34)

  • Note 2209621 - Assortment Listing API: List by DC fix - or upgrade to EA-RETAIL 606 SP16 (Installation Guide, 2015,p.10)

  • Note 1983853 - DRFOUT: Enhance the product attributes for upgrade support pack replication (Installation Guide, 2015,p.34)

  • Note 1994823 - EA-RETAIL: Enhance product characteristics to include Fashion Grade for upgrade support pack replication - or upgrade to EA-RETAIL 606 SP14 and SAP_APPL 606 SP14 (Installation Guide, 2015,p.34)

  • Note 2004326 - DRFOUT: Inconsistent product data is replicated in the receiving system.(Installation Guide, 2015,p.34)

  • Note 2032294 - DRFOUT: Extension of product attributes for upgrade support pack data replication – or upgrade to SAP_APPL 606 SP14 (Installation Guide, 2015,p.34)

  • 2069483 - Prerequisite for upgrade support pack note 2068874 - or upgrade to SAP_APPL 606 SP14 (Installation Guide, 2015,p.34)

  • 2068874 - Missing Category Flag Information in Article Hierarchy – or upgrade to EA-RETAIL 606 SP14 (Installation Guide, 2015,p.34)


 

SAP CAR Components’ Installation



  • Prerequisite on CAR’s NW stack:

    • See table 3 in SAP CAR Installation Guide for all relevant Notes for SAP CAR. You have to work through these notes to determine if they are applicable to your environment. (Installation Guide, 2015,p.7)

    • NetWeaver 7.4 requires preferably SP11



  • Apply note 2249562 - HANA Content corrections valid for SAP Customer Activity Repository 2.0 FP2 – remember to do manual post steps. (Installation Guide, 2015,p.7)


Steps:

  1. Download NW7.4 software

  2. Get the required SP stack files from SAP

  3. Create a HANA database tenant (you can use a standalone HANA database)

  4. Start SWPM and install NW7.4

  5. Update the Support Stack to SP15 with SPAM


I received the following error when I imported the support packs.



 

The solution was to add note 2251752 into transport with transaction SNOTE.

  1. Continue with Support Pack upgrade in SPAM as user DDIC.

  2. Run transaction SPAU. It only had the above mentioned note in it. I reset the note to status “original”.

  3. Post processing

    1. Run transaction STC01 with task list SAP_BASIS_SETUP_INITIAL_CONFIG.



  4. Download CARAB software via MOPz

  5. Move the stack XML file from Solution Manager to CAR’s server:

  6. Run transaction SAINT and load the XML file

    1. This gave me an error.






I then had to set the status of the note 2298340 to complete even though the note shows that it cannot be implemented.

SAINT then completed successfully.

 

  1. Download the UDF packages. Please note that each package is only compatible with one database version.

  2. You need to read Note 2050229 - Release and Upgrade Information for Unified Demand Forecast Application Function Library (UDF AFL). It explains the installation of the Unified Demand Forecast application function library.

    1. Download the software and ftp it to a directory on the HANA server

    2. Unpack it with SAPCAR

    3. Call hdblcm with the component_dirs flag to point it to the unpacked directory.

      1. # ./hdblcm –component_dirs=<dir where file is>/SAP_UDF_AFL_FOR_HANA





  3. Setup the SAP Client

    1. Verify the client number in the ECC source system

    2. Create a new client on CAR with the same client number as your ECC source client and with profile CUST




 

Post Installation Steps


Create a user on HANA for the deploy activity



  1. Create a user on HANA database and assign the following authorizations:




















































Tab Value Select Details
System Privileges CREATE SCHEMA
System Privileges ROLE ADMIN
System Privileges USER ADMIN
System Privileges REPO.IMPORT
Object Privileges SYS_REPL EXECUTE
SELECT
INSERT
UPDATE
DELETE
Object Privileges _SYS_BI SELECT


  1. Deploy the user. (Configuration Guide, 2016, p12)


Authorization setup for HANA content activation


(Configuration Guide, 2016, p13)

  1. Open SAP HANA studio, in the Navigator panel, expand SAP HANA server => Security => Users.

  2. Double-click user _SYS_REPO to enter the edit screen for the user.

  3. Choose the listed tabs and enter the relevant values according to the following table:























Tab Value Select Details Note
Granted Roles AFL__SYS_AFL_UDFCORE_AREA_EXECUTE This role is created automatically when install the UDF AFL
Object Privileges SAP<SID>

SELECT

INSERT

DELETE

UPDATE
Physical database schema of back-end system. Typically this is called SAP<SID>


  1. Choose Deploy.

  2. Double-click user SAP<SID> to enter the edit screen for the user.

  3. Choose the listed tabs and enter the relevant values according to the following table:













































































Tab Value Select Details Note
Granted Roles CONTENT_ADMIN
Granted Roles AFL__SYS_AFL_UDFCORE_AREA_EXECUTE This role is created automatically when install the UDF AFL
System Privileges CATALOG READ
System Privileges CREATE SCHEMA
System Privileges REPO.IMPORT
System Privileges ROLE ADMIN
System Privileges STRUCTUREDPRIVILEGE ADMIN
Object Privileges _SYS_BI SELECT
DELETEINSERT
Object Privileges _SYS_BIC

SELECT

EXECUTE
Object Privileges _SYS_REPO SELECT
Analytic Privileges _SYS_BI_CP_ALL


  1. Choose Deploy. (Configuration Guide, 2016, p14)


 

Install HANA LIVE



  1. SAP recommends that you read the Release Information Note 1778607 , which informs you about the highest supported SAP HANA release available for SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite.

  2. Use the document called SAP HANA Live Install for more information on installing SAP HANA Live.


SLT setup



  1. Install SLT server (SAP NW7.4 with component DMIS)

  2. Ensure that the correct version of DMIS is installed on source and replication server.

  3. Verify that the SLT-specific web services are activated before you launch the Configuration & Monitoring Dashboard (transaction LTR). Use transaction SICF to activate the following services:



  • iuuc_replication_config

  • iuuc_repl_mon_powl

  • iuuc_helpcenter

  • iuuc_helpcenter_document

  • iuuc_repl_wdc_config_gaf

  • iuuc_repl_mon_schema_oif

  • /sap/public/bc

  • /sap/public/bc/ur

  • /sap/public/mysso/cntl

  • /sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/iuuc_repl_mon_schema_oif

  • /sap/public/bc/icons

  • /sap/public/bc/icons_rtl

  • /sap/public/bc/webicons

  • /sap/public/bc/pictograms

  • /sap/public/bc/webdynpro

  • /sap/public/bc/webdynpro/adobeChallenge

  • /sap/public/bc/webdynpro/mimes

  • /sap/public/bc/webdynpro/ssr

  • /sap/public/bc/webdynpro/ViewDesigner

  • /sap/bc/nwbc


(Configuration Guide, 2016, p15)

Setup the RFC connection to the source system



  1. See SAP Note 1700052 if you use a non-Unicode system.

  2. Please note that (1) refers to the SLT system and not the source ECC system.

  3. Please note that during the setup of the connection between SLT and HANA a user with the same name as the “Configuration Name” will be created on the HANA system with a schema with the same name.

  4. Create a user in the source ECC system for extracts called SLT_REMOTE with role SAP_IUUC_REPL_REMOTE (SAP SLT Operations Guide, 2016, p.15)

  5. Create a RFC to ECC <client> with the SLT_REMOTE user

  6. Run transaction LTR and create an entry


 



Assign Roles to SAP HANA Replication User


Assign the following roles to the user which you used in the SLT connection (basically the schema name of ECC) and to user SAP<SID>.























Tab Value
Role <REPLICATION SCHEMA>_DATA_PROV
<REPLICATION_SCHEMA>_POWER_USER
<REPLICATION_SCHEMA>_USER_ADMIN
<REPLICATION_SCHEMA>_SELECT_USER

(Configuration Guide, 2016, p19)

Create the database tables


Once the schema and the schema mapping have been prepared, the required tables need to be made available in the schema. Since the tables and their replications consume system resources (depending on their size), SAP recommends to replicate the data only for tables that are actually used, and to merely create all other tables. (Installation Guide, 2015,p.48)

 

Generally, the tables listed in SAP Note 1782065 ,  1781992 and  2224566 must exist in the SAP HANA database. See attached files for the tables. (Installation Guide, 2015,p.48)

 

The following is an extract out of SAP Note 1799313 - Create tables for SAP HANA Live

  • Logon to the SAP SLT Replication server

  • Call transaction LTRC

  • Select the replication configuration you already created for data replication from the SAP Business Suite system to the HANA DB system

  • Press "Execute (F8)". The next screen will show the details of this replication configuration.

  • Select the "table overview" tab. On top the function "data provisioning" will get visible.

  • Execute the function "data provisioning". On the subsequent popup select the function for table creation.

  • Press the multiple selection pushbutton besides the table name field.

  • The following screen allows the entry of multiple table names. It also allows to upload the list of table names from a text file. Make sure, that the text file only contains table names and no other information/data.

  • The notes associated with the SAP HANA Live content packages usually have a TXT file attached containing the list of tables. In some files each line consists of a schema name comma separated from the table name (e.g. "SAP_ECC, T002"). In such cases you can use the "Find & Replace" function of a simple editor to remove the schema name and comma (e.g. replace "SAP_ECC," with "").

  • Upload the text file with the table names and press "Copy (F8)" to return to the previous screen.

  • Press "Execute (F8)" to trigger the table creation.


(SAP Note 1799313, 2014)

Configure schema mapping within CAR’s HANA database:


You must set up a schema mapping to map the authoring schema of a content package to the physical database schema of the relevant tables. The authoring schema is the database schema that is referred to in the content package. In a customer system, the tables are typically stored in another database schema, namely either in the schema configured in SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server (for the side-by-side scenario). (Configuration Guide, 2016, p20)

Please read this blog for definitions of authoring and physical schemas:

http://saphanatutorial.com/sap-hana-schema-mapping/

(Anonymous, 2015)

Authoring Schema = SAP_ECC

Physical Schema = SAPXYZ (schema of ECC source database)

Steps:

  1. Choose schema mapping by;

    • Right clicking on the CAR system in HANA => SAP HANA Modeler => Schema mapping

    • Add entry for SAP_ECC as authoring and SAPXYZ as physical.






 

Download and Deploy Content Package on HANA



  1. Download from https://service.sap.com/swdc => Installation and Upgrade => A – Z Index => H => SAP HANA ANALYTICS FOR ERP, save and extract the files to your desktop. (Configuration Guide, 2016, p21)

  2. In HANA Studio – go to File => Import

  3. Choose Delivery Unit and then the database

  4. Choose the *.tgz files for import.


It is important to check the job log to ensure that all the content activated as expected. There are loads of SAP notes on activation errors which I won’t be able to cover here.

SLT – Optimization


The systems should now be in a state that you can handover the CAR system to your functional consultants. The functional consultants will inform you as to the tables that requires replication from your ECC source system to HANA. Please make use of the blogs below as they explain using filtering of larger tables when the initial load from source to HANA is done.

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/02/25/how-to-filter-on-the-initial-load-parallelize-replication/  (Koebler, 2014)

https://blogs.sap.com/2013/09/26/how-to-improve-the-initial-load-by-row-id-approach/ (Koebler, 2013)

 

References


Installation Guide. (2015).  Common Installation Guide SAP Customer Activity Repository 2.0 FP2, SAP Assortment Planning for Retail 1.0 FP2, SAP Merchandise Planning for Retail 1.0, SAP Promotion Management for Retail 8.1 FP2. Retrieved from https://uacp2.hana.ondemand.com/doc/bf90e721f9314a278c0ca94631371b99/2.0/en-US/loio827ac977723745e58...

Configuration Guide. (2016). Configuration Guide -Getting Started with Implementing the SAP HANA Customer Activity Repository Rapid-Deployment Solution V5.10

SAP SLT Operations Guide. (2016). SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server For SAP HANA Platform SPS12. Retrieved from SAP Service Market Place

Anonymous. (2015). Schema Mapping. Retrieved from http://saphanatutorial.com/sap-hana-schema-mapping/

Koebler. (2014). How To filter on the initial load & parallelize replication DMIS 2011 SP06 or higher. Retrieved from https://blogs.sap.com/2014/02/25/how-to-filter-on-the-initial-load-parallelize-replication/

Koebler. (2013). How to improve the initial load. Retrieved from https://blogs.sap.com/2013/09/26/how-to-improve-the-initial-load-by-row-id-approach/

 

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26 Comments
former_member247261
Discoverer
0 Kudos
 

Hi Robert,

a customer of us plans to implement SAP CARAB 2.0 on HANA.

ERP Retail is running already on HANA 1.0 SPS12.

Could you give us some hints regrading landscape design and sizing of SLT and CARAB application Server ?

Do you have both as 3 Tier Installation ?

Thank you ?

Regards,

Fritz
brian_lawrence
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Fritz

The system that I installed was a proof of concept but hooked up to a production ERP Retail system. I therefore only had a development and “production” CAR system in the landscape.  Our company intended to use CAR only for the POSDM function and not for all the other functions like UDF and DDF. It was used to determine if we could cut down on our create-order process. So a long story to tell you that I don’t have the right experience to guide you from a full CAR landscape point-a-view.

However, I don’t see a need for a 3 tier SLT system. I think that a 2 Tier will suffice seen that your development system can service the QA and Regression systems as well. I was amazed that the SLT system took some serious pain when it came to hardware resources. When setting up CAR, hundreds of tables are replicated from ERP and some of them are your “most frequently written to” tables which translates into loads of changes that have to be shipped from ERP to CAR. The load of the replication was on the SLT server and not on the ERP server. Our ERP server has a 23TB database and grows at about 400GB a month, this will hopefully give you some indication of the rate of change on the tables which will be replicated. The SLT server had 2 CPUs (4 cores each @ 4004 MHz) and 30GB RAM. The CPU’s basically ran flat-out all of the time in order to cope with the load.

Hope the info helps.

Regards

Robert

 
former_member472435
Participant
0 Kudos
Hi Robert,

Can you provide your view on co-deploying S/4HANA with CAR ? On doing so SLT is not required. It has its pros and cons highligted by SAP.

Would you prefer a standalone CAR or CAR co-deployed with S/4HANA ? Would like to get your expert opinion.

Regards,

Mihir

 
brian_lawrence
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Mihir

Apologies for the late reply.

 

I have to start off by stating that I don't have experience with co-deploying S/4HANA, but I would argue the following:

It seems that SAP's current trend is to consolidate systems by creating landscapes where systems share platforms, databases and in some cases systems within systems.

Majority of my professional career has been spent in a retail environment which means 24x7 up time is paramount (I'm sure everyone will say that). Then there is the amount of downtime required for upgrading HANA software as well as the accompanied hardware drivers and SUSE patches which can occur multiple times during a year. It also obviously depends on whether you have a HADR system to which you can switch to while upgrading the primary site and thereby limiting your downtime.

So, if your landscape (and / or business processes) can afford downtime on CAR at the same time S/4 is being patched/upgraded etc. then I would say that it would make sense to co-deploy.

The speed and power of SLT has been impressive and I cannot fault it on those bases.

Bottom line for me is that I would be prone to go with separate systems.

 

Regards

Robert
adrian_mejido
Contributor
0 Kudos
Hi Robert,

Good document!

 

I am trying to install a Co-Deployed scenario with S/4HANA, but I have some doubs about data replication. As I know SLT is not required, but what about DRF? In the installation guide I read that is necessary to replicate some data master (for example products) from the data master system to the Sap CAR system(I am installint DDF and SAP Allocation Management for Retail).

In my case S/4HANA is the data master system and I don’t know if I have to do that, because I have a co-deployed scenario. I have searched  information about that, but I coulnd’t find any document which explains that scenario requirements. All I could find is about SAP ERP as data master system.

Do you know the requirements and steps to achieve my installation? Is there any guide to follow?

Best regards.
0 Kudos
Great document!

I have a customer inquiring about minimun internet and bandwith requirements to assure CAR online connection and transfer in/out information to POS from PMR and OPP.

Do you happen to have that info?
brian_lawrence
Explorer
0 Kudos
 

Hi Eliana

We have 10000 POS devices spread across 1500 stores and the bandwidth ranges from 4Mb/s to 6Mb/s per store. Our CAR system is not used for OPP or PMR so I don’t have facts directly related to your question, however we do run our real-time loyalty system from our SAP CRM system and all the POS traffic runs over the 4 – 6 Mb/s lines. Our round trips are below 200 ms (that includes the loyalty calculation of a basket with, on average, more than 10 items).  Some stores are in remote areas but the bulk of the stores are in major towns and cities. The maximum physical distance from store to server would thus be about 2000km which results in relatively low latency.

Hope this helps

Regards

Robert
Former Member
0 Kudos
Hi Robert,

Thanks for the great blog, We are doing a poc in which we need source system as S4 hana system, The Car system has already been hooked to another ERP system, I would like to know if it is possible to pull data from two source systems?

 

Thanks,

Animesh Uniyal
brian_lawrence
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Animesh

When we did our installation we had the same requirement (2 source systems) and we referred it back to SAP who replied that it is not possible to have more than 1 source system. Please take into consideration both our source systems would have been ECC6 and not S4 so I don't know if that would influence the answer.

Regards

Robert
0 Kudos
Hello Robert,

This is really nice piece of document. Really very helpful.

I have one query here. Let me brief you our landscape.

In our case, we have S4 1610 as source system & CAR as Target system.

We do not have separate SLT server so installed SLT (DMIS Component) in CAR system only.

After all SLT configuration, it seems that all Source Tables & data has been replicated successfully in CAR HANA Database. But I am not able to see those replicated tables & data from CAR application layer though I can see them from HANA Studio.

Can you please let me know how to access those source tables & data from CAR application layer? Actually I want to do some POSDTA configuration where will define store customization and other stuffs.

In some of the document(SAP blog) I can see post about SAP HANA Content for SAP CAR which have set of views along with SAP HANA Live part. Is this applicable in our case as well?

Do you have any other link/document which I can follow in our case.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Shraman

 
amauryvanespen
Active Participant
0 Kudos

Hi brian.lawrence

Thank you for this great blog post.

SAP HANA Tutorials seems to be over, is there an archive of the content ?

Thank you

Amaury

brian_lawrence
Explorer

Hi 778c06e5953840f38a3ea49dddfbf4ec

Thanks for letting me know about the unavailability of the SAP HANA Tutorials website. I notified the owner of the site.

In the meantime please have a look at http://www.saphanacentral.com/p/schema-mapping.html as it has similar information as the unavailable website.

Regards

Robert

 

 

0 Kudos
Hi Robert,

Good post...!

 

I have S/4 HANA 1709 as a back-end system and CARAB 2.0 SP04 on HANA as a front end system.

(CAR RETAIL APPLICATIONS BUNDLE 2.0 SPS04 (01/2018)  CAR RETAIL APPL BUNDLE 2.0).

I need your help to understand, how i can proceed to setup this.

I am using CIG giude, but it is not very much helpfull.

is there any guide for setup procedure step by step.

 

Regards,

Parmod Kumar
0 Kudos
HI Pramod,

 

Hope you have answers by now.

If not, let me know I can able to answer.

 

Thanks

Rajendra.
christoph_ostrop
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

thanks for that blog – great info

but is there any update coming corresponding to SAP-CARAB-4.xx, newer NW-7.xx ? ,

also in PAM there is info missing about OS-version, db-version (anyDB possible?)

and this wiki also is “old” information – is an update coming ?

https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/Retail/SAP+Customer+Activity+Repository

brian_lawrence
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Christoph

 

I'm about to embark on an SAP-CARAB-4.0 installation, so I should hopefully be able to update the blog in a few weeks time.

I saw on the wiki that you asked about a sizing tool.

You can find the latest sizing questionnaire on SAP's help portal https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/CARAB/4.0.1/en-US

Goto the "Additional Information" section and click on the Sizing (All Scenarios). Download the required sizing docs. Once it has been completed,  open a message under the component CA-RT-CAR, specifying "CAR Sizing" in the short text and attach the completed questionnaire.

Hope this helps for now.

Robert
christoph_ostrop
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Hi, Robert,

thanks for your answer,  i am looking forward to new blog-info about Vers.4.xx

is SAP SLT the tool, that one “must have” and “must use” ?,

or is there a hint to avoid installing SLT by using something different tool, maybe Libelle sytemCopy?

Thanks,

Christoph

brian_lawrence
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Christoph

The whole idea of CAR is to have real-time data in your system. For this SLT is the answer as you require data that gets updated in your ECC system to reflect in your CAR system immediately. SLT creates triggers on specified ECC database tables which forwards the updates to tables in CAR with the same structure and name.

I would therefore do not think that a client or system copy tool like  Libelle sytemCopy would suffice. I'm also not aware of any other tool in the market that does the same task as SLT yet I stand to be corrected.

Regards

Robert
christoph_ostrop
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Hi Robert,

thanks for your answer, – one more question:

We have 3-system landscape of ERP (dev, test, prod)

and we will have 3 CAR-systems (dev, test, prod)

is there only 1 SLT system needed or should we have to install SLT 3 times (dev, test, prod) ??

brian_lawrence
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Christoph

 

I would have at least 2 SLT servers. One to service DEV and TEST, the other for PROD.

 

Regards

Robert
christoph_ostrop
Active Contributor
0 Kudos
great, thanks.
0 Kudos
Hi Robert,

One of our client want to upgrade CAR server from version 1.0 to 4.0. Is it possible to upgrade from 1.0 to 4.0 and what  challenges we will face if we directly go to 4.0 from 1.0.

 

Regards,

Himanshu
former_member699972
Participant
0 Kudos
Hello,
Can the SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR) be used with standard S / 4 HANA ERP as well as SAP for Retail?

Best Regards,

Kenji Eimura
Farid
Active Participant
0 Kudos
Hello Robert,

 

Great blog.

Based on your experience with CARAB , do you see any issue with having S/4HANA and CARAB deployed in a Cloud Hybrid architecture, somethhing like described  here :

 

https://answers.sap.com/questions/13225177/sap-carab-and-s4hana-in-a-public-cloud-hybrid-arch.html

 
nepiiva
Member
0 Kudos
Hello Robert,

 

Thanks for the great blog. I'm curious if you could spend a few words on SAP CAR licensing?

 

Regards,

Ivan
mahenpande
Participant
0 Kudos
HI christoph.ostrop  : how to get the access, its showing access denied. please help