After being a member of the national team for the past six years I was cut this spring due to the team’s financial constrains, despite the fact that last year I earned my own world cup spot in giant slalom for the 2012-2013 season. To be able to take advantage of the spot I have earned as an independent athlete, I am fundraising to cover equipment expenses and the logistical expenses associated with preparing for and following the world cup circuit next season! Teammate Hailey Duke (who is in a similar position) and I are forming a “team” called the Athlete Project with a coach and technician.  The Athlete Project has a mission to support the athletes when and where it really counts!  We have the ability to build and customize the ideal training environment to reach the peak of our careers next season but we need your help to raise support!  We are looking for donors and/or sponsors that can be advertised on our uniforms, websites and helmets.  All funds raised will go directly into the athletes’ travel, training and racing expenses.  Follow our progress on this blog and see what it takes to prepare, travel and race on the Women’s Alpine World Cup circuit. Witness the passion, love for skiing and the true spirit of competition in these two athletes.

You can directly donate to me by clicking the donate button below or contact me at skib...@skib about sponsorship ideas!

Thank you!!!

2011-2012 Overall Noram Giant Slalom Podium

All of the Noram award plates won by the awesome girls on the U.S. europa cup team!

Noram finals in Le Massif, Quebec

When I first realized I was going to be doing Norams all season, it felt like a step back but I didn’t realize the enthusiasm of the younger girls and that the europa cup coaches were providing an environment that encouraged development in contrast to the world cup team.  This season, if nothing else, I learned to appreciate all the relationships I have made through ski racing and I love all my skier friends, new and old!

Dinner prepared by the new young rippers on our team! YUM!

Saying bye to one of our veterans ;-( Sarah I will miss you, your career is an inspiration to mine!

Seasons change, the U.S. ski team goes through phases and personal careers go through intense waves of success and struggle!

As I get ready for spring, I am feeling ready for a break but positive and hopeful for next season!

“Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” -Marilyn Monroe

“Find your bliss, and don’t be afraid to follow it.”

Celebrating my passion for skiing with friends and family on the closing day at Park City Mountain Resort!

2011-2012 Overall Noram Giant Slalom Podium

All of the Noram award plates won by the awesome girls on the U.S. europa cup team!

Noram finals in Le Massif, Quebec

When I first realized I was going to be doing Norams all season, it felt like a step back but I didn’t realize the enthusiasm of the younger girls and that the europa cup coaches were providing an environment that encouraged development in contrast to the world cup team.  This season, if nothing else, I learned to appreciate all the relationships I have made through ski racing and I love all my skier friends, new and old!

Dinner prepared by the new young rippers on our team! YUM!

Saying bye to one of our veterans ;-( Sarah I will miss you, your career is an inspiration to mine!

Seasons change, the U.S. ski team goes through phases and personal careers go through intense waves of success and struggle!

As I get ready for spring, I am feeling ready for a break but positive and hopeful for next season!

“Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” -Marilyn Monroe

“Find your bliss, and don’t be afraid to follow it.”

Celebrating my passion for skiing with friends and family on the closing day at Park City Mountain Resort!

DataXstream to Exhibit and Present SAPPHIRE NOW and 2012 ASUG Annual Conference

DataXstream is pleased to announce its participation at SAPPHIRE NOW and 2012 ASUG Annual Conference. Visit us at booth 316 where we will discuss exciting news about our new Quick Connect for SAP Information Interchange. and demo our custom POS application, designed in support of SAP for Retail.

We will also discuss our expertise in SAP project management, SAP advisory, ISV integration, disaster recovery, virtualization, technical consulting and infrastructure architecture.

Live Demos of our Custom Retail POS Application

Stop by booth 316 to view a live demo of our custom retail POS application and learn how it allows the direct management of sales order processing in SAP, instead of on a remote disconnected system. A single streamlined interface is used to manage brick-and-mortar store orders, web orders and customer support functions. This means all business associates see the same information presented the same way.

Running in real-time on top of the core SAP system makes all the available information and reporting an immediate reflection of business activity – an invaluable benefit for store operations and management reporting. Additional key features and functions include:

• Streamlined Sales Order Management
• Intuitive End-User Design
• Flexible Payment & Tendering
• Real-time Reporting for Store Managers
• Efficient Returns, Refunds, and Exchanges
• Real-time Inventory and Delivery Integration

For more information on the SAP POS Application, view the product brochure and video demo.

Interact With us and Win a new iPad!

Stop by the booth and get your badge scanned to be entered into drawling to win a new iPad.

Want more ways to win?

From May 13-17, 2012, DataXstream will be giving away a new iPad each day to a Twitter follower.

To enter into the Twitter Contest:

1. You need to follow or be following @dataxstream on Twitter
2.  Simply tweet a message  using the hashtag #DATAXSTREAMATSAPPHIRENOW

You may enter once each day and a winner will be chosen and announced each afternoon.

View the Official Contest Rules.

Click here to request a .zip file containing a copy of the source code.

The BAPI

This sample program uses BAPI_MATERIAL_GETLIST since it uses table parameters.  In SAP, table parameters can act as both importing and exporting parameters.  BAPI_MATERIAL_GETLIST uses the following table parameters as import parameters:

MATNRSELECTION
MATERIALSHORTDESCSEL (not used in this sample)
MANUFACTURERPARTNUMB (not used in this sample)
PLANTSELECTION (not used in this sample)
STORAGELOCATIONSELECT (not used in this sample)
SALESORGANISATIONSELECTION (not used in this sample)
DISTRIBUTIONCHANNELSELECTION (not used in this sample)

BAPI_MATERIAL_GETLIST uses these table parameters as export parameters:

MATNRLIST
RETURN

All of the import table parameters are selection-table style table parameters.  SAP Help does a good job of explaining selection tables.  For sake of brevity, my sample utilizes only one of the import table parameters (MATNRSELECTION).

Design the Form

This solution consists of a group box with controls to build a selection table, a list view to display the results, and a HUGE “Go” button (all prototype programs need a huge “Go” button!).

SAP Connection Information in App.Config

The SAP connection information is stored in App.Config.  Modify the configuration file to point to your SAP application server with a valid username, password, and client.

The Code

The key piece of code to pass a table of data to a SAP RFC via NCo is below. Before you can add records to the importing table parameter, you need to instantiate a reference to the function using a IRfcFunction object.  Once you have a reference to the RFC, you can instantiate an IRfcTable object for the table parameter which you want to use.  Use the .Append() method to create a new row in the IRfcTable object.  When you call the .Append() method, the current index property of the table is set to the newly appended line.  At this time, you can use the IRfcTable.SetValue() method to populate the data fields.

Once the table data been added, you can invoke the RFC.  Since all of the objects are created with references to each other, the data table and all its rows are passed to SAP.

            //Processing Before SAP Function Call
            ...

            //Get destination
            RfcDestination SapRfcDestination =
              RfcDestinationManager.GetDestination("DEV");

            //Get SAP Repository
            RfcRepository SapRfcRepository = SapRfcDestination.Repository;

            //Set function
            IRfcFunction BapiMaterialGetList =
              SapRfcRepository.CreateFunction("BAPI_MATERIAL_GETLIST");

            //Get reference to table object
            IRfcTable So_MATNR = BapiMaterialGetList.GetTable("MATNRSELECTION");

            //Add select option values to MATNRSELECTION table
            foreach (ListViewItem lvi in listViewMATNR.Items)
            {
                //Create new MATNRSELECTION row
                So_MATNR.Append();

                //Populate current MATNRSELECTION row with data from list
                So_MATNR.SetValue("SIGN", lvi.SubItems[0].Text);
                So_MATNR.SetValue("OPTION", lvi.SubItems[1].Text);
                So_MATNR.SetValue("MATNR_LOW", lvi.SubItems[2].Text);
                So_MATNR.SetValue("MATNR_HIGH", lvi.SubItems[3].Text);

            }

            //Set Maximum number of rows
            BapiMaterialGetList.SetValue("MAXROWS", txtMaxRows.Text);

            //Call BAPI on SAP system
            BapiMaterialGetList.Invoke(SapRfcDestination);

            //Process RFC return
            ...

Usage

I am assuming that, by now, you have familiarized yourself with SAP selection tables.  Therefore, I will not go into too much detail on the usage of this sample program.  BAPI_MATERIAL_GETLIST is a function that returns a list of materials based on the selection criteria provided.  To add entries to the selection table, select a sign and option, then add a low and high (optional) value.  Once complete, click the “+” button to add the entry to the selection table.  To remove an entry from the selection table, highlight the entry in the list view and press the “-” button.

I entered the following entries to the selection table:

NOTE: If a SAP material number consists solely of numerical digits, it will be left padded with zeroes.  In order to ensure proper data selection, I implemented a private method ConvertMatnr() to ensure the proper formatting of material numbers.

Results

Here are the results from the above data selection set when run against our development SAP instance.  Your mileage may vary:

As you can see, passing table parameters to a SAP RFC via SAP NCo 3.0 is relatively easy and straight-forward.  Happy coding!

Additional Information

Follow these links for more information about NCo 3.0 programming:

• Webinar: SAP NCo 3.0 – Best Practice Guide for Upgrade from .NET Connector 2.0
• Source Code: NCo 3.0: Pass Table Parameter to SAP RFC Client for C#
• NCo 3.0 RFC Client example: Build an RFC Client with NCo 3.0 – A Step-By-Step Guide
• NCo 3.0 RFC Server example: Build an RFC Server with NCo 3.0 – A Step-By-Step Guide

What compels a firm running multiple versions and multiple products of SAP to upgrade its ERP and other usage types? The (not always) obvious reason is the need for new functionality, which can better support company business needs and help them thrive in an ever growing competitive landscape. Basically, they want their business to run better than other businesses in their market. So a brief note on the release strategy for SAP applications, which follow a “5-1-2” maintenance concept: “5″ years of mainstream maintenance; “1″ year of extended maintenance at an additional two percent of the maintenance fee; and finally, “2″ years extended maintenance at an additional four percent fee. Not cheap, but it may be cheaper than a big upgrade project. After that, if you still don’t want to let go of the SAP release, there is always customer-specific maintenance, which is expensive.

I am sure that most of the decision makers are not aware of this information, and that is why I’m  writing this post.  SAP customers need to know of the additional investment they would have to make to keep their SAP system, running status quo.  I would encourage you, and your bean counters, to do the math on considering your SAP installations. After that, I am sure you would be compelled to focus on the upgrade (if not now, when?).

New Functionality

The main reason for upgrading has almost always been the additional functionality.  There are other reasons as well, like instance consolidation, virtualization, and requirements based on hardware, software and O/S.  Every SAP release brings new features, challenges and opportunities.  The need to upgrade is mostly driven by business needs, which in turn require new functionality in your SAP environments.  This empowers your company by transforming your processes and moving your company to higher levels of efficiency, richer reporting with new and improved analytic tools like BIA and HANA, and ability to make timely and informed business decisions.  The choice must be made whether to implement and develop the new functionality or perform an upgrade. This is not always an easy evaluation and the amount of customizing you do will certainly drive this decision.  This is the so-called “solution gap” and you have to ask, is the solution gap large enough to justify the SAP release upgrade?  And since SAP upgrades are time consuming and usually complex, is it worth investing time, money and resources to address this solution gap with an upgrade?

Yesterday’s Technology

SAP systems need to be constantly customized and enhanced in order to support evolving business needs. The time will come when the installed instances will no longer be able to suit your needs.  Staying on the same release is unsustainable from an infrastructure point of view as you will be required to stay on older hardware, software, and O/S.  If you have systems with many external touch points, it becomes more difficult over time to keep these working, especially if you are running much older SAP software.

Support Costs

As I pointed out earlier, there is a maintenance limit to every SAP instance, and the extended support leads to significant additional costs.  Here lies the tipping point between an upgrade and paying for the extended support. There are two choices: upgrade or a customer specific maintenance.  The latter is not very attractive as it implies increased cost for a depleted service level, as SAP no longer provides support packages for releases that are out of maintenance.  Surprisingly 35 to 40 percent of SAP customers are compelled towards an SAP upgrade based on this factor, which would be either ending the maintenance period for their SAP release or incurring the additional maintenance cost.

What it Takes

Testing and end user training represent the major part of any upgrade project. These processes take the most time and effort.  During the upgrade, do not implement new features, modules or applications.  The primary focus should be the upgrade task, and the new features should be implemented afterwards in a separate project.  Like any install/upgrade process, you should start at the first system in your landscape, like DEV or the Sandbox.  After upgrading the DEV system, you need to test all relevant SAP applications, custom developed objects and integration to other applications (SAP and non-SAP). If you have used Solution Manager (most companies don’t), I  recommend  using this investment by leveraging the testing and TAO on SOLMAN.  While you resolve the issues arising from the release upgrade, the production system is still running in the old release, hence change management procedures need to be set up to support the production system.  This can be done by moving to a “5” system landscape (a subject I’ll cover in another blog.)

SAP Upgrade

The technical portion of an SAP upgrade is typically less than 25 percent of the work.  The other 75 percent goes to testing and training for the new release, as upgrades affect the business applications and processes. As you start an SAP upgrade project you must realize the following:

• Every member of the SAP upgrade team conforms to the upgrade methodology.
• You have SAP Solution Manager installed and running as part of your SAP installation.

The SAP technical upgrade consists of five major phases:

1. Preparing of the Environment
2. The Prepare Process
3. Up Time of the Upgrade
4. Down Time of the Upgrade
5. Post Processing Activities

Let’s break them down.

Preparing the Environment

Proper preparation of the upgrade is required or you will run into problems.  An upgrade is a time-consuming and complex task, hence the need to be organized and maintain good documentation of your work.  SAP has a wide range of upgrade services within their portfolio, such as Go-Live Functional Upgrade Check, SAP Safeguarding, SAP upgrade Hosting and many more.  The list is constantly being updated to cover various audiences and scenarios. Check out http://service.sap.com/upgrade-erp/ for their latest set of offerings.

Project Plan

After reading the materials, as well as comparing my own experiences with my colleagues on several upgrade projects we came to a consensus of developing 3 phases:

• Phase 1 – A high level view of upgrading all the different SAP systems (DEV, QA, PRD) and the satellite systems (BW or SCM etc.)
• Phase 2 – A detailed task list for each instance within the overall landscape describing the activities needed to be carried out before, during and after the upgrade.
• Phase 3 – Describe the technical upgrade itself, as it contains the action taken during the technical upgrade.

Collaboration

Upgrade projects need the commitment and support of management and all the teams that are impacted by it. Some of these teams include the project management team, technical upgrade team, and functional team.

Sizing

DO NOT skip this section.  I have run into so many issues around sizing, so if you think you don’t need to size, you are wrong.  Resource requirements increase with every SAP release, and if you have a productive SAP environment, this increase is difficult to change and quantify.  Sizing depends heavily on which SAP modules and business processes are used, the number of concurrent users, and the amount of business data (transactional data).  Analyzing the current situation is the first step in estimating the load increase. This is why we emphasized having SAP Solution Manage running before you start thinking of an upgrade. Apart from providing the analysis on the current system through Early Watch Reports, Solution Manager is also necessary to get the upgrade key (migration key) from SAP.  In addition to this, SAP also provides some online tools for capacity planning which can be accessed from http://service.sap.com/quicksizer, and besides this, many performance and tuning transactions exist in SAP like DB02; ST03N; STAD; ST04, SM04, ST06,etc.

The Prepare Phase

The technical process imports the tools required for the upgrade and performs extensive checks to see whether the system is ready for upgrade.  Careful preparation of the upgrade is the best guarantee that it will run without any errors.  The prepare program uses a series of checks to support the preparation of the upgrade; it can be used without affecting the productive environment.  The advantages of executing PREPARE are:

• It uses the same upgrade tool as the upgrade (technically it is the special run mode of the upgrade program R3up.).
• It displays and highlights the objects that would appear during the modification adjustment.
• It forecasts the number of database conversions, space requirements, and requests allocation of additional space if necessary.
• It can be executed while the system is being used for productive purposes.

The PREPARE phase can be broken down into seven different sub-phases, as schematically displayed in figure 1.

                                                             Figure 1: Upgrade Process

The PREPARE starts from the input phase in which information on the system to be upgraded and key generation activity are performed through Solution Manager. Then, some basic consistency checks are done.  In the initialization phase, along with some basic checks on the source system, the SAP and database releases are verified and the needed space for the upgrade tools is verified (this is a critical step, have double the DB storage available.)  The import phase imports all the tools needed for upgrade into the database and installs them in the upgrade directory.  In the extension phase, the add-ons, support packages, user modifications, and languages are installed in the source and integrated into the upgrade.  The extension phase is the most important phase in PREPARE as the target release of every SAP component and add-ons is decided.  The extension phase leads into the integration phase in which all the support packages, add-ons, customer modifications and additional transports are integrated into the upgrade.  The integration and extension phase are closely related.  The installation phase comprises the shadow instance and shadow schema being created into the database.  At this point, all the verification tools are used to verify the source environment meets the upgrade requirements.  The general check module identifies many things like versions of systems, looks at the locked objects and availability of free space for database, lists tables which are not converted, DDIC and repository object with conflicts in the new release, etc.  The luxury we have in the PREPARE is that it can be run and reset any number of times.  Before the actual upgrade, the successful execution of the PREPARE phase insures somewhat smooth sailing during the upgrade.

Up Time of the Upgrade

This phase calls for activities like:

• Importing of all new data dictionary objects, programs and languages together with the latest support packages into the system, all in a non-active stage.
• Comparison of the new data dictionary object with those changed by the customer through modifications and notes.
• Resolution of data dictionary conflicts.
• Activation of data dictionary objects still in a special non-active stage.
• A mass pre-upgrade conversion of large tables (ICNV).

Down Time of the Upgrade

• Activating all new repository objects (dictionary and development objects).
• Changes at database level, e.g. creation or conversion of tables.
• Conversion program to adopt data into the system according to the changes data model.
• Technical activities e.g. parameter changes, etc.
• Importing of custom modifications to the development objects.
• Key user testing

Post Processing

Release the system to end users to start post-production work in the new release.

An upgrade of SAP to a new release is tricky.  With this blog, I have tried to show some of the motivating factors which an organization may need to review before committing to an upgrade project.  Furthermore, I have identified some of the key phases and activities that need to be carried out within a SAP upgrade project.

I need to copy it to a Virtual Machine so I don’t have to type in all of the SAP system information.  As many of you know, SAP saves SAP Logon Pad entries in a file called saplogon.ini.  For many releases, this file resided in the C:\Windows directory.  Since Microsoft has began enforcing their improved security model, SAP has adapted and, therefore, moved the location of saplogon.ini to a directory that I can never seem to remember.  I have SAPGUI 7.20 running on Windows 7 (x64) and I find myself scouring my hard drive in search of saplogon.ini!  I have 38 versions of the file, but which is the right version? Don’t worry, I finally found the right one. But I have performed this search at least three times in the past year! I seem to never make a point to note the location of saplogon.ini.  I can’t be alone in this search.

So for future me and you, dear internet community, here is the location of saplogon.ini file in Windows 7 for SAPGUI 720:

<AppData>\Roaming\SAP\Common

(e.g. C:\Users\cstasila\AppData\Roaming\SAP\Common)

If you happen to be running an older version of SAPGUI on Windows 7, your saplogon.ini file may be in the following location:

<AppData>\Local\VirtualStore\Windows

(e.g. C:\Users\cstasila\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows)

I would like to point out that there are multiple ways for system administrators to override and/or centrally manage the saplogon.ini.  If this is the case, the above locations of saplogon.ini are ignored.

As a final note to my future self: What happened to you?  You used to be so cool!

I knew I had hit Wyoming when they were herding cattle down the middle of the road!

I want to thank everyone who keeps believing in me and going out of their way to help me with my skiing and on my journey.  The past couple of weeks and months these people have been all of the Park City Ski Team staff, Jeff Pickering, Trevor Wagner and Prado with the Europa Cup team, my parents, my boyfriend Cody and my team mate Hailey Duke!

Because these were my first speed races in a long time, the speed felt really intense at first but got more managable as the week progressed.  I was working on evening out my pressure and I think that, if anything, this focus will benefit my giant slalom and I am glad I did it!

To nurse my fears, I made sure to visit the bakeries of Aspen in the afternoons.

This is a picture of Aspen from town. The downhill is the run that comes into view in the upper right corner and drops all of the way down to the base and takes about one minute and forty seconds to ski!

Technician extraordinaire and I at the start getting ready!

I took this picture of myself in an effort to show off my lululemon shirt from DataXtreme and thank them for all of their support!

There are three key things a customer wants to be able do once a decision has been made to buy your products: place an order, make payments, and take delivery.  Conversely, the customer also wants to be able to easily return products and receive a refund.  A streamlined and simplified process for store associates enhances the customer experience and speeds throughput.

The enhanced POS application for SAP from DataXstream makes this all possible by minimizing time spent by the store associate using the system and frees them up to manage the totality of the customer interaction.

The DataXstream POS application allows the direct management of sales order processing in SAP, instead of on a remote disconnected system.  A single interface is used to manage brick-and-mortar store orders, web-orders and customer support functions. This means everyone is seeing the same information presented the same way.

The application runs in real-time on top of SAP, making all reporting an immediate reflection of business activity: an invaluable asset for store operations and management reporting.

To learn more about the DataXstream POS application, visit our Retail POS page or view our product brochure.