SAP ERP System Landscape

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The diagram below is what an SAP ERP system landscape might look like when the SAP ERP system is installed locally:

Core Systems – Promote to Production

Development System (DEV):

All customizing and development work is performed in this system. All system maintenance including break/fixes for productive processes is also performed in the system. After all the changes have been unit tested, these changes can be transferred to the quality assurance system (QAS) for further system testing.

Quality Assurance (QAS):

After unit testing the customizing, development and break/fix changes in the development system (DEV), the changes are promoted to the quality assurance system (QAS). Here, the configuration, development or changes undergo further tests and checks to ensure that they do not adversely affect other modules (integration testing).

When the configuration, development or changes have been thoroughly tested in this system and signed off by the quality assurance team, it can be promoted to the production system (PRD).

Typically this system is also used for training users and mock-migration runs.

Production System (PRD)

A company uses the production system (PRD) for its live, productive work. This system—containing the company's live data—is where the real business processes are executed. After go-live the production system is typically periodically used to refresh the quality assurance system so that testing is performed on a realistic

Additional Systems

Disaster Recovery System (DRS)

The disaster recovery system is a system (usually off-site) where back-ups of the production system are loaded frequently (even real-time). In many cases, an organization may elect to use an outsourced disaster recovery provider to provide a stand-by site and systems.

Sandbox System (SBX):

The sandbox system is used for destructive testing, learning, and testing. Generally any configuration or development that is possibly system breaking will be first implemented in the sandbox and tested.

Change and Transport system

SAP provides the Change and Transport system to transfer customizing and development data from client to client and system to system.

Customizing is a process to configure the SAP system according to the customer’s need. To perform customizing, consultants use the SAP Reference Implementation Guide (IMG). Customizing is done in the DEV system (and SBX). Customizing should be avoided in the QAS and strictly forbidden in PRD.

The Transport Organizer is used in conjunction with IMG to record and transport changes to the configuration to other clients and systems. Customizing changes are typically client-specific. When the Transport Request is exported, it extracts the relevant table entries from the database of the SAP system and copies them to the transport directory in a Transport Request.

Furthermore, a Workbench Transport Request is generated for changes to ABAP programs. You do not need to transport workbench requests between clients of the same system as programs are client independent. These are required when transporting programs between systems.

Note that master data and transaction data are not automatically recorded into transport request. You typically create these again in every other client/instance you wish to work in.