oracle for sap - technology update nr

8/8/2019 Oracle for SAP - Technology Update Nr

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Oracle SAPfor

the Grid enabled

platform

Oracle for SAP

is safe, reliableand scalable

No. 15 Oracle for SAP, April 2006

www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap

T E C H N O L O G Y U P D A T E

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D A T A B A S E


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Oracle for SAPis safe, reliable and scalable

the Grid enabled platform

1 Editorial

2 Update: Oracle Database 10gand Real Application Clusters 10gfor mySAP

6 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Stadtwerke Munich (Windows)

8 Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) Advantages for SAP Customers

10 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at S.R.I., Fujitsu Siemens, (Solaris)

12 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Gas Natural, BW (Linux)

15 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) Certified Configurations for Windows and Linux

16 Dr. Oetker: DB2 to Oracle migration to SAP BW

18 Informix: Oracle database migration at Testo

22 Oracle Data Mining for SAP Business Warehouse Customers

25 Delta Consulting: RAC Services for SAP Customers

26 ChevronTexaco: Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) for SAP at ChevronTexaco

28 Burda: HP Tru64 to HP-UX Oracle to Oracle Migration

31 COOP Switzerland: Oracle Advanced Customer Services

34 Japan Aviation Electronics (JAE) using Oracle Customer Services for SAP

36 Dell: Configuring a Highly Available Linux Cluster for SAP Services

44 Oracle RAC and Egenera

46 SAP INFO Solutions: Active Global Support Whats New?

47 TUSC: Oracle Partner for SAP

48 Oracle PREMIUM Services for SAP R/3 Customersr s

51 BPEL: Integration to SAP, Webservices54 Useful Links Oracle for SAP Customers

54 Imprint

C O N T E N T S

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D A T A B A S E


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D E A R S A P C U S T O M E R ,

I hope you will enjoy reading this 15th Edition of the Oracle for SAP Global

Technology Update.

For over 17 years Oracle has been the leading database for SAP customers and we

remain committed to our long term goal to provide safe, reliable, and scalable

database technology for our SAP customers. Two thirds of SAP customers run their

SAP application on an Oracle database, leveraging their investment in Oracle technology.

As an ongoing commitment to our joint customer base, SAP and Oracle have extended

the long standing Development, Reseller and Support relationship.

Oracle9iReal Application Clusters (RAC) is now available on all HW platforms and Oracle 10gRelease 2 is now

shipping to SAP customers! This is a major milestone for SAP customers running the Oracle database; it enhances

database availability, scalability, and it lowers the TCO. While unprecedented market pressure to decrease costs

and provide fast interconnect technology prefaced the development of grid technology, the development of

Oracle 10ggrid technology will provide SAP customers with additional benefits.

In this edition of the Oracle for SAP Technology Update you will read about Oracles 10 gtechnology benefits

to SAP customers and Oracle Data Mining Technology integration, which provides SAP customers advanced

analytics embedded in SAP BW as an optional feature. We have also included a significant number of new

SAP on Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) customer success stories.

You will read about Oracle Services and Support available to SAP customers including; database migrations,

and performance tuning. Also learn how customers worldwide have reduced costs by migrating their Informix

database under SAP to Oracle. The Oracle database technology has a proven track record to minimize IT costs

throughout the whole life cycle of an SAP application.

We hope you enjoy this edition of the newsletter!

Any news about this and other topics will be published immediately on our web site, so check back periodically

at: www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap Please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions or comments.

E-mail: [email protected] For price information about Oracle9iReal Application Clusters contact your

Oracle or SAP Account Manager or E-mail us at: [email protected]

Sincerely

Gerhard Kuppler

Senior Director Corporate SAP Account

Oracle Corporation

1Oracle for SAP


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U P D A T E O R A C L E D A T A B A S E 1 0 g A N D

R E A L A P P L I C A T I O N C L U S T E R S 1 0 g F O R M Y S A P

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D A T A B A S E

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Oracle Database 10g has been designed to reduce the

cost of manageability, to deliver increased performance

for all types of workloads and to provide major new

high-availability features.

Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for

Enterprise Grid Computing to lower hardware costs

by leveraging low cost components and by greatly

increasing resource utilization levels, therefore com-

plementing the Advanced Computing Infrastructure

concept of SAP.

As with previous Oracle database versions, all trans-

parentfeatures of Oracle Database 10g are immediately

available for all types of SAP applications. The initial

certification of Oracle Database 10g by SAP has been

done at the end of the first quarter of 2006. After the

initial certification more new Oracle Database 10g

features will be adopted by SAP over time.

F E A T U R E S I M M E D I A T E LY

S U P P O R T E D B Y S A P

The features described in this section are available

for and offer benefits to all types of SAP applications.

They are supported with the initial certification of

Oracle Database 10g now.

Instant Client

Instant Client allows you to run your applications

without installing the standard Oracle client or

having an ORACLE_HOME. OCI-based applications

like mySAP work without modification, while using

significantly less disk space than before.

Rename Tablespace

You can now rename a tablespace. You no longer have

to create a new tablespace, copy the contents from the

old tablespace, and drop the old tablespace. This

feature makes it easier, for example, to migrate a dic

to transport a tablespace to a database that already

contains a tablespace of the same name.

Online Segment Shrink

This feature shrinks segments of tables and indexes

online and in-place that have free space in them,

thereby enhancing efficiency of space utilization.

Automatic Optimizer Statistics Collection

This feature automates the collection of optimizer

statistics for objects. Objects with stale or no statistics

are automatically analyzed, so administrators nolonger need to keep track of what does and what does

not need to be analyzed, nor to perform analysis by

hand.

End-to-End Application Tracing

The feature simplifies the debugging of performance

problems in multi-tier environments. It will only be

available for new versions of the SAP software and

not for existing versions.

Online LONG to LOB Migration

In this release tables with LONG and LONG RAW

data, still used by many SAP applications, can now

be migrated online to LOB data from within the

BR*SPACE utility of SAP.

N E W F U N C T I O N A L I T Y W I T H

S A P B W 7 . 0

SAP BW users will benefit most from the new features

describes in this section. They are supported with

the initial certification of Oracle Database 10g now.

Faster Drop and Truncate Table

These two operations perform substantially faster by

using improved algorithms in accessing the database

buffer cache. In particular small tables, often used by

SAP BW, benefit the most.


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Oracle 10g Update for SAP supported features 3

In Memory Undo

Block changes by short transactions are now managedcleverer by the database server resulting in less CPU

cycles.

Improved Scalability for Partitioned Objects

Dropping partitioned tables and indexes is now

substantially faster by using a new algorithm for

identifying the blocks of a partitioned object in the

buffer cache and for cleaning these blocks in the

buffer cache. The SAP BW application benefits the

most, as dropping partitioned objects is a frequently

used operation in SAP BW.

Tests performed using a query on a table with 1,000partitions show that Oracle 10gs new strategy of

sharing partitioning metadata results in less SQL mem-

ory usage in the SGA (9.2.0.6: 52KB, 10.2: 11KB

this means that every single query on this table will

use 5 times less memory).

O R A C L E R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N

C L U S T E R S 1 0 g

Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) allows Oracle

Database to run any packaged or custom application,

unchanged across a set of clustered servers. This pro-

vides the highest levels of availability and the mostflexible scalability. To keep costs low, even the high-

est-end systems can be built out of standardized, com-

modity parts. Oracle 10g RAC provides a foundation

for Oracles Enterprise Grid Computing Architecture.

Oracle RAC technology enables a low-cost hardware

platform to deliver the highest quality of service that

rivals and exceeds the levels of availability and scala-

bility achieved by the most expensive, mainframe

SMP computers.

Oracle 10g RAC is not included in the initial certifi-

cation of Oracle Database 10g. In the same way as for

Oracle 9.2 RAC, a separate release process is carriedout. During the second and third quarters of 2006,

there are one or two Oracle 10g pilot projects planned

that will lead to Oracle 10g RAC being released in

the SAP environment during the third quarter of

2006.

Integrated Clusterware

Oracle RAC 10g offers a complete clusterware mana-gement solution as an integral component of Oracle

RAC 10g available on all platforms Oracle Database

10g runs on. This clusterware functionality includes

mechanisms for cluster connectivity, messaging and

locking, cluster control and recovery, and a services

provisioning framework. No 3rd party clusterware

management software need be purchased. Oracle will,

however, continue to support select 3rd party cluster-

ware products on specified platforms.

With Oracle Database 10g Release 2, Oracle provides

a High Availability API so that non-Oracle processes

can be put under the control of the high availabilityframework within Oracle Clusterware.

Single System Image Management

Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g has been significantly

enhanced to enable true single system image manage-

ment of cluster database deployments. Enterprise

Managers Cluster Database Page provides a single

view of system status across multiple nodes. It also

enables direct drill down to individual instances when

needed.

A new cluster configuration verification tool and

improvements in the diagnostic tools first introducedin the Oracle9i Database release help users both avoid

problems and resolve problems more quickly should

they occur.

Data Guard Integration for Disaster Recovery

With Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, the manage-

ment component of Oracle Data Guard, Data Guard

Broker, is now completely integrated with RAC.

Data Guard disaster recovery environments involving

Oracle RAC databases can now be as easily managed

as those employing single instance databases.

F E A T U RE S T O B E S U P P O R T E D

L A T E R B Y S A P

Backup Compression

If disk space is an issue, or your media-management

software does not support compression, RMAN pro-

vides the ability to compress RMAN backup sets.


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Full Database Begin Backup Command

It is no longer necessary to issue a separate commandto place each tablespace in hot backup mode. You

can now use the ALTER DATABASE statement to

place all tablespaces in backup mode. Also, the

BEGIN BACKUP command now runs faster than

before.

Change-Aware Incremental Backup

By using a new type of log file to track blocks that

have changed in the database, RMAN can avoid

scanning the entire datafile during an incremental

backup. Instead, the amount of data scanned is pro-

portional to the amount of data changed.

Secured Redo Transmission

When using the Advanced Security Option of Oracle

Database 10g the security of a Data Guard environ-

ment can be increased by preventing possible tampe-

ring of redo data as it is being transferred to the

standby database. As long as SAP has not certified

the Advanced Security Option this feature will not

be available for SAP installations.

Data Pump Export and Import Utilities

The Data Pump Export and Import utilities provide

very high-speed bulk movement of data and meta-

data from database to another. These utilities offer

several significant advantages over the original

Export and Import utilities, including: the ability to

completely restart export and import jobs; the ability

to detach from and reattach to long-running jobs;

the ability to estimate how much space an export job

would consume; support for export and import ope-

rations over the network; and support for fine-grained

object selection, based upon objects and objects types.

This feature will initially not be integrated within

the SAP administration tools.

The new Data Pump Export and Import utilities can

each be run in parallel, resulting in better performancein loading and unloading data and metadata.

Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespaces

The transportable tablespace feature now enables

tablespaces to be transported across different plat-

forms therefore making a platform migration for a

SAP customer much faster.

Flashback Technology

In this release, Oracle introduces expanded databaseflashback capabilities. If a major error occurs, such as

a batch job being run twice in succession, the data-

base administrator can request a flashback operation

that quickly recovers the entire database to a previous

point in time, eliminating the need to restore back-

ups and do a point-in-time recovery. In addition to

flashback operations at the database level, it is also

possible to flash back an entire table in this release

of the Oracle database. Similarly, a new capability

allows the database to recover tables that have been

inadvertently dropped by a user. The existing flash-

back query capabilities have also been improved.

Flashback Database: This feature introduces the

FLASHBACK DATABASE statement in SQL. It

let you quickly bring your database to a prior point

in time by undoing all the changes that have taken

place since that time. This operation is fast, because

you do not need to restore the backups. This in turn

results in much less downtime following data

corruption or human error.

Flashback Reinstantiation: This feature reduces

the need to reinstantiate the old primary database

following a failover. This in turn lets you more

quickly restore full resiliency after a failure. This

is done by using the SQL statement FLASHBACK

DATABASE to roll back the primary database in

time to synchronize with the standby database.

Flashback Standby Database: This feature

improves the switchover and failover time of a

standby database. You no longer need to specify a

log apply delay, because you can now roll back the

standby database if some error occurs on the primary

and is propagated to the standby.

Flashback Table: This feature introduces the

FLASHBACK TABLE statement in SQL, whichlets you quickly recover a table to a point in time

in the past without restoring a backup.

Flashback Versions Query: Using undo data

stored in the database, you can now view the

changes to one or more rows along with all the

metadata of the changes.


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Oracle 10g Update for SAP supported features 5

Flashback Drop (Recycle Bin): Oracle now

provides a way to restore accidentally droppedtables. Prior to Oracle 10g, a DROP command

permanently removed objects from the database.

In Oracle 10g, a DROP command places the object

in the recycle bin. The extents allocated to the

segment are not reallocated until you purge the

object. You can restore the object from the recycle

bin at any time. Within SQL*PLUS you are

able through the SHOW RECYCLEBIN [origi-

nal_name] command to view the objects that are

available for purging or reverting using the PURGE

and FLASHBACK BEFORE DROP commands.

Flashback Transaction Query: This feature intro-duces flashback transaction query, which lets you

examine changes to the database at the transaction

level. As a result, you can diagnose problems,

perform analysis, and audit transactions.

Automated Storage Management (ASM)

ASM automates and simplifies the optimal layout of

datafiles, control files, and log files. Database files are

automatically distributed across all available disks, and

database storage is rebalanced whenever the storage

configuration changes. This feature also provides

redundancy through the mirroring of database files.

ASM was particularly designed for using low costservers and disks. However, ASM support by SAP

will not be available with the initial certification of

Oracle Database 10g though. ASM will be added

later only for installations of new versions of SAP

products. A migration path for older versions of SAP

products will follow once the initial certification for

ASM is been done by SAP.

F E A T U RE S T O B E S U P P O R T E D

L A T E R B Y S A P

TheSAP Database Guide: Oracle, which is available

via the Media Library on service.sap.com, describessupport for new Oracle 10g features in SAP

NetWeaver 2004s. TheDatabase Upgrade Guide

(Upgrade to Oracle Database 10g) describes the tech-

nical details of the upgrade process.

SAP OSS Note 720886 is the master entry point for

information about Oracle Database 10g integration

into the SAP environment. OSS Note 828268 provides

an overview of new features that can be used in the

SAP environment and points to other OSS notes

A D D I T I O N A L I N F O R M A T I O N

TheSAP Database Guide: Oracle, which is availablevia the Media Library on service.sap.com, describes

support for new Oracle 10g features in SAP NetWeaver

2004s. TheDatabase Upgrade Guide (Upgrade to Oracle

Database 10g) describes the technical details of the

upgrade process.

SAP OSS Note 720886 is the master entry point for

information about Oracle Database 10g integration

into the SAP environment. OSS Note 828268 provides

an overview of new features that can be used in the

SAP environment and points to other OSS notes that

discuss individual features in more detail (see page 54).

C O N C L U S I O N

Oracle Database 10g provides the necessary infra-

structure of making the SAP landscape more respon-

sive to the changing business environment. Oracle

Database 10g gives you the flexibility you need to

implement Enterprise Grid Computing, even using

low cost servers and disks. The design of Enterprise

Grid Computing complements the Adaptive

Computing Infrastructure concepts of SAP. Oracle

Database 10g provides the benefit of lowering risks

with lower manageability costs, greater scalability

and predictability and the highest levels of availa-bility.


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Intensive use of SAP entails higher

requirements

The Stadtwerke Munich (SWM) is the largest

municipal enterprise in Germany with around

7000 employees and group revenue of 2.95

billion euros (2004). From the private indivi-

dual or medium-sized company through to the

global player, customers of all types can find a

partner in SWM to supply them with power,

water and associated services reliably and cost

effectively. In addition to power supply andservices, the spectrum offered encompasses the

complete energy and water value-added chain.

SWM is also a municipal service provider

offering high-quality service and promoting

leisure activities in the world famous city on

the Isar, thanks to its indoor and outdoor

swimming pools. And with the comprehensive

mobility package of MVG (subway, bus and

tram), SWM ensures the inhabitants of Munich

mobility in a way that is friendly to the city

and environment. To provide its services,

SWM is available around the clock 24 hours

a day, 365 days of the year.

This type of all-round supply has important

prerequisites for the IT systems used. These

too have to be available around the clock

especially the SAP solutions used. SAP R/3

(Version 4.6C) and the branch solution IS-

U/CCS (Version 4.64) enable the management

of customer and supplier data, service accoun-

ting, purchase handling, maintenance manage-

ment and much, much more. In total, SWM

has around 3000 users. The Microsoft Windows

platform combined with an Oracle database is

the preferred medium for SAP use at the end

of the mainframe era, though open-source

platforms (above all Linux) have also figured

in the considerations for quite a while now.

These are also based on Oracle, and more-over:

the extent of SAP use has been and still is

continuously increasing. The SAP database

volume is growing by around 50 gigabytes amonth, and currently totals around 2 terabytes.

In addition to SAP, SWM has well over 100

other applications which operate together on

an Oracle database. Extensive experience has

already been gathered in non-SAP environ-

ments with the innovative database clustering

technology Oracle Real Application Clusters.

Good experience with Oracle RAC in a

non-SAP environment

Ever more demanding challenges for SAP

applications, combined with a growing datavolume and increasingly deteriorating perfor-

mance, were the reasons behind the reorienta-

tion towards RAC. We also wanted to utilize

the advantages which Oracle RAC provides for

SAP use in Windows, especially as our existing

experience was very positive, declares Rudolf

Bayerl, Head of System Operations in the area

of Information and Process Technology at SWM

The objectives which we had pursued with migration towards Oracle Real Application

Clusters have been greatly surpassed. The improvements with respect to costs, availability,performance and scalability can be clearly evidenced. We have been able to optimize SAP

use effectively in Microsoft Windows with Oracle RAC and are therefore in a strong position

for the future

R U D O L F B A Y E R L

Head of System Operations, Area of SWM Services GmbH

Information and Process Technology

Stadtwerke Munich

Services GmbH

Industry:

Utility/Public Sector

Annual Revenue:

2.95 billion euros (2004)

Employees:

Around 7,000

Oracle Products & Services:

Oracle database 9.2.0.5

Oracle Real Application

Clusters (RAC)

Oracle OCFS

Oracle Support

Key Benefits

Options for optimizing cost

efficiency

Higher failure reliability

Improved scaling potentials Performance improvements

Increase in investment

safeguarding

Improvement of

High Availability

Cost Reduction

Long-term IT concept

to ensure ROI

Streamlined DBA

productivity

State-of-the-art High-

Availability Concept

S T A D T W E R K E M U N I C H I S P U R S U I N G N E W A V E N U E

F O R S A P U S E I N W I N D O W S W I T H O R A C L E R E A L

A P P L I C A T I O N C L U S T E R S ( R A C )


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Oracle Database 10g Information is CurrencySAP Real Appl ication Clusters at Stadtwerke Munich

Services GmbH. Oracle RAC has enabled the

longstanding SAP customer SWM (which hadalready employed SAP R/2 before SAP R/3) to

combine several advantages: hardware invest-

ment safeguarding, increase in failure reliabi-

lity, performance increases and additional

options for improved scalability.

After several discussions with Oracle, Microsoft

and SAP as well as the storage supplier EMC

and the hardware provider Dell, a project was

formulated with the following objective:

Oracle RAC was to be used together with SAP

R/3/IS-U/CCS and Microsoft Windows 2003

Server Edition as a productive application atSWM for the first time in the world as part of

a pilot project. April 1st 2004 was earmarked

as the project start. Existing Microsoft clusters

were to be used for the central instance, while

an RAC configuration was to be employed for

the database. In the case of SWM, this meant

that Oracle database clustering was to be

operated on 3 nodes with three instances from

then on, instead of a conventional central

instance.

Step by step towards a mutual goalAs this involved a pilot project, more time

than is usually the case was calculated for

its implementation. As the Head of System

Operations H. Bayerl explains, The result

was important for us. Everyone involved was

basically sitting in the same boat and striving

towards the same objective.

All project steps were worked out according to

a project plan that was drawn up beforehand.

Problem cases and platform-specific adaptations

were approached jointly and solved with the

objective in mind. The first phase involvedsetting up the new SAP-Oracle-RAC-R/3

landscape including new hardware. The work

was carried out with current SAP data right

from the start. The second phase comprised

testing, while the system and individual

elements underwent continuous tuning.

Specialists from the Development department

of Oracle USA assisted in work on the Oracle

Cluster File System (OCFS) over several weeks

as part of the tuning measures. We achieved

our mutual goal on a step by step basis. The

commitment shown by the partners involved

was remarkable. The entire project team set

about its tasks with dedicated enthusiasm,emphasizes Manfred Fischer, Systems Engineer

at SWM Services GmbH.

Surpassing objectives previously set

SAP productive operation with Oracle Real

Application Clusters on the operating system

platform Windows 2003 Server Edition and

clustered Dell computers commenced at the

beginning of June 2005. So far SWM is ex-

tremely satisfied with the results. That should

come as no surprise: The improvements we

had aimed for have been greatly surpassed,

summarizes IT expert Bayerl.

Tests performed prior to productive deploy-

ment revealed that the computer performance

with Oracle RAC in Windows was higher than

expected. While the dialog response times with-

out Oracle RAC were on average 450 milli-

seconds, these improved significantly with

Oracle RAC to reach around 340 milliseconds,

said system specialist Fischer.

This situation has led us to examine integra-

tion of the SAP-HR system operating separa-

tely in the RAC environment, which wouldsignify savings in the administration costs.

But that is not everything. The availability

has increased demonstrably, to be precise from

98.9 to 99.5 percent (within a monitoring

period of two months), which has important

consequences for SWM in view of its aim to

achieve as great a SAP availability as possible.

The BladeFrame allows an organization to

7


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8

It goes without saving that the fail-over func-

tionality was extensively tested before theproductive start. Three instances serve one

database in parallel. A Windows cluster is

operated on the three nodes in order to ensure

that the central instance is also failsafe.

Furthermore, the new technology has made it

possible to increase scalability to a higher level,

thus providing the benefits of extended invest-

ment safeguarding. This consequently enables

an upgrade from a 3-node to a 4-node environ-

ment at any time. It is also possible to achieve

an additional system extension with compara-

tively inexpensive hardware. The sky's thelimit for us now, aptly summarizes one mem-

ber of the IT department.

Further Oracle use is definitely in planning

Thanks to the positive results experienced withOracle RAC both for SAP use in Microsoft

Windows and when using non-SAP applications

on an open-source basis, the IT experts at SWM

aim to extend the use of Oracle Real Application

Clusters. That means there are plans for a

migration of all smaller applications to Oracle

combined with use of Oracle RAC. In other

words, weve shown that we can kill more or

less several birds with one stone using Oracle

RAC. The cost aspect plays a crucial role for

this. Oracle RAC makes us hardware-indepen-

dent while enabling us to achieve the same or

even more with less hardware.

High Availability and Workload Distribution

One of the key drivers to move to Oracle RAC

is its compelling active/active architecture.

This architecture improves high availability and

provides better resource utilization. It reduces

unplanned as well as planned downtime, but

even if no problem occurs, Oracle RAC allows

customers to distribute the workload to as

many nodes as are available.

With a single SMP server, if anything fails the

whole machine goes down user processing is

interrupted and can take 20 to 30 minutes to

resume on a cold standby system (active/passive

architecture). In such an environment, when the

primary system fails, administrators have to

manually dismount and remount storage volu-

mes, user connections have to be established to

the new server and the buffer cache in the stand-

bys memory needs to be populated with the

most frequently used data.

Oracle RACs active/active system offers virtually

uninterrupted processing for users and elimina-

tes the need for these recovery steps all cluster

nodes are always connected to all the storage so

no volume dismounting and remounting is

required. Users on the surviving nodes remain

connected, only the users on the failed nodeneed to reconnect.

Oracle RAC helps to reduce planned down-

time as well. As RAC nodes can be added and

removed on the fly, maintenance tasks such

as hardware or operating system upgrades can

be performed on individual nodes without

shutting down the system completely.

Oracle RAC enables the Oracle Database Server to run real applicationson clusters. By real

applications we mean that RAC does not only support applications designed with a clustered

database architecture in mind, but mainstream business applications of all kinds. This

includes popular packaged products such as SAP. It includes both OLTP (e.g. mySAP ERP)and DSS (e.g. SAP BW).

O R A C L E R E A L A P P L I C A T I O N C L U S T E R S ( R A C )

A D V A N T A G E S F O R S A P C U S T O M E R S


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Grid Computing (Adaptive Computing)

Today, businesses are putting IT organizations

under tremendous pressure to deliver the high-est quality of service, in terms of maximum

availability and scalability, at the lowest pos-

sible cost, and at the highest level of efficiency

and flexibility. In short, IT is being asked to

do much, much more with much, much less.

Enterprise Grids make these seemly impossible

challenges achievable. Enterprise Grids, made

up of large configurations of very low cost, com-

modity clusters, dramatically reduce the cost

of computer hardware. Oracle RAC technology

enables this low-cost hardware platform to deli-

ver the highest quality of service that rivals andexceeds the levels of availability and scalability

achieved by the most expensive, mainframe

SMP computers. By dramatically reducing

administration costs and providing new levels

of administration flexibility, Oracle is enabling

the enterprise Grid environment.

The Enterprise Grid will have a profound im-

pact, enabling business to be more adaptive,

proactive and agile. With enterprise Grids,

data centers will have the ability to meet the

changing demands of business at each moment

in time just in time. Application workloadswill be managed as services that must meet

defined levels of quality. Processing resources

and storage will be allocated to services in a

fluid fashion to ensure that those quality levels

are maintained. Each processing node or stor-

age component in the Grid can change its

individual personality almost instantaneously

without any downtime for any application.

Performance and Scalability

SAPs applications ares based on a 3-tier archi-

tecture: the data are managed by a databaseserver, the application functionality runs on

an application server, and on the users device

runs nothing but the presentation functiona-

lity.

This architecture provides for scalability at the

application layer, because SAP supports the

distribution of the application workload across

several application server instances, which in

turn can be run on several application server

machines.

However, SAPs architecture is not as scalable

at the database layer, as it assumes that there

is one single database server only. Therefore, in

the past, when the workload was growing, at

the application layer it was up to you to either

replace the existing machine by a bigger one

(scale up) or add an additional machine of

similar size and power (scale out) whereas

at the database layer the scale up approach

was your only option. Oracle RAC has chan-

ged that: As for an application an Oracle RAC

system looks perfectly like one single database

server, the SAP application now accepts the

existence of several Oracle instances runningon several machines. In other words: Oracle

RAC gives you all the scalability options at

the database layer which you have always had

on the SAP application layer.

Oracle Database 10g Information is Currency 9Oracle Real Appl ication Clusters (RAC) Advantages for SAP Customers

1a: Active/passive cluster solution (failover cluster) 1b: Active/active cluster solution (Oracle RAC)


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10

M A N A G I N G M A X I M U M A V A I L A B I L I T Y S I M P L Y A N D E F F I C I E N T L Y:

S R I R A D I O S Y S T E M S T A K E S A N E W A P P R O A C H T O

R U N N I N G S A P R / 3

SRI Radio SystemsGmbH, Durach

www.sri.de

The Customer

SRI Radio Systems GmbH,

Durach

The Project

Optimization of the

IT infrastructure for SAPR/3 to ensure higher

and simpler operations

management

The Solution

The worlds first Solaris-

based implementation

of SAP R/3 on Oracle

Real Application Clusters;

installation and manage-

ment with VERITAS Storage

Foundation for

Oracle RAC from

Symantec Corporation

Partners:ey Benefits:

Oracle and Symantec

Cost Reduction

Long-term IT concept

to ensure ROI

Streamlined DBA

We have achieved all our objectives. Despite the fact that the solution is very

innovative, Fujitsu Siemens Computers implemented the project without anyhitches and faster than planned. That is not necessarily the rule in the IT sector.

R A I N E R W O H L H F N E R

Head of Information Technology,

SRI Radio Systems GmbH

Benefits for SRI Radio Systems

Maximum availability for business processes

No unused server capacities

Lower administration overhead Simple scalability of the environment

Improved response times

Rapid implementation of the new solution

in less than three months

The solution at a glance

Introduction of a disaster-proof cluster environment for

SAP R/3

Migration from SAP R/3 4.6c to Oracle RAC Implementation and management with VERITAS Storage

Foundation for Oracle RAC

Servers: 3x PRIMEPOWER 450, each with four SPARC

processors and 16 GB main memory

Operating system: Solaris

Concept: SRI Radio Systems and Fujitsu Siemens Computers

Implementation partners: Oracle and Symantec Corporation

Powerful, reliable business processes are a top

priority for more and more companies. Yet this

usually means that costs grow faster than the

demands, for example due to redundant infra-

structures and the time and effort needed for

operations management. That is why SRI Radio

Systems took a different approach, introducing

a solution that comprises a unique combination

of leading software on Solaris-based PRIME-

POWER servers and is distinguished by fault

tolerance, performance on demand, optimal useof resources and efficient management. For the

first time in the world, Fujitsu Siemens Compu-

ters implemented SAP R/3 on Oracle Real

Application Clusters (RAC) with VERITAS

Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC (SFRAC)

from Symantec Corporation (formerly VERI-

TAS Software).

About SRI Radio Systems

Few mobile phone users know what they are,

but use them just the same: wireless base

stations with UMTS and GSM technology from

SRI Radio Systems (SRI). The company from

Durach, a suburb of Kempten, Germany,

employs just over 500 people and has long

been an established partner of carriers. The

latter have come to respect the high standard

of quality of the systems, for example, and the

refined production and logistics processes with

which SRI ensures its ability to deliver at

short notice. The fact that the company lives

up to the very highest standards was confir-

med when it was named The Best Factory

in the Industrial Excellence Award 2005.


13/56

SAP on Real Appl ication Clusters (RAC) at S.R. I . with Fuj itsu Siemens 11

Optimization according to the minimax

principle

Whether in Rovaniemi, Durban or Hamilton,

SRI supplies and installs turnkey base stations

worldwide within just five days on request a

service that would be unimaginable without

perfect production and logistics processes.

And the availability demands that SRI makes

of its entire SAP environment are accordingly

high. However, they were hard to reconcile in

practice because the production line runs five

or six days a week over three shifts. That left

only a very narrow time frame on the wee-

kend for maintenance work. Anyproblems there would have had an immediate

impact on our business, says Rainer Wohlhf-

ner, Head of Information Technology at SRI.

That was a risk that SRI wanted to minimize

with a new solution offering maximum availa-

bility for the SAP environment and simpler

operations management.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers offered the ideal

concept with a high-availability parallel com-

puting environment.

VERITAS SFRAC and SAP R/3 on Oracle

RAC were implemented on three Solaris-basedPRIMEPOWER servers. And there were good

reasons for this choice. With its multiple,

simultaneously active nodes, Oracle RAC

ensures maximum fault tolerance for the data-

base. Since the workload is distributed across

the cluster, companies can use several smaller

and low-cost servers and, if needed, expand

the environment flexibly by adding new

servers. Effective support is offered here by

VERITAS SFRAC. Components of the inte-

grated solution include special cluster server

technology and a cluster file system to enable

simpler installation and management of RACdatabases. In the event of an error, this ensu-

res that there is a smooth switchover between

the servers; one of the systems remains the

master and data consistency is retained.

Here are the details of the solution, which has

been tested by SAP exclusively for FujitsuSiemens Computers. One Oracle instance and

an application server are installed on each

system in the cluster. The enqueue server and

the replicated enqueue have also been separated

and virtualized. SRI uses VERITAS SFRAC

for cluster management and switchover. The

impact of this combination is enormous:

maximum availability, yet minimum admini-

strative overhead and costs. There is reliable

protection against individual potential error

sources. The entire environment is also disaster-

proof, since one node is installed at a separate

location. Optimal use is made of computingpower. SRI was also able to reduce its hardware

investments, since no redundant systems are

required. This would not have been possible

with conventional clusters. And, last but not

least, users profit from response times that are

better by around 40 percent. So it is no wonder

that Wohlhfner is satisfied with the new

solution: The concept is very convincing. We

also liked the fact that Fujitsu Siemens Com-

puters needed less than three months for the

project and that the changeover was complete-

ly transparent. Our 480 employees didnt

notice a thing.


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12

The SAP infrastructure changeover has completely fulfilled our expectations. We can benefit from the

SAP-validated and certified infrastructure architecture model with Oracle RAC and Linux in a varietyof respects for SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP-SEM use.

J O S L U I S C H E C A ,

Systems & Architecture Manager,

Gas Natural

S A P N E T W E A V E R B U S I N E S S I N T E L L I G E N C E / S A P

S T R A T E G I C E N T E R P R I S E M A N A G E M E N T

A T A G L A N C E

Gas Natural has utilized a system platform chan-

geover to optimize SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP SEM

use and create advantages in terms of efficiency

With approximately 10 million customers, the Gas

Natural Group based in Barcelona represents a key

international player in the energy sector. The Gas

Natural Group, operating in a total of 10 countries

with just under 6,700 employees, achieved annual

net profit 633.9 million euros in the financial year

2004. Since deregulation of the energy market in

1998, the multinational company has been pursuing

an ambitious expansion and diversification strategy.

In addition to the production, supply and transport

of natural gas, the energy group now generates elec-

tricity with its own power stations and wind turbinegenerators, which it provides to end consumers and

companies. To increase competitiveness and realize

growth-oriented company objectives, Gas Natural has

intensively utilized solutions provided by the mySAP

Business Suite family since 2000.

SAP solutions are an important cornerstone for us on

the path towards further profitable growth, states

Jos Luis Checa, Systems & Architecture Manager at

Gas Natural.

Several objectives on the to-do list

In the autumn of 2004, Gas Natural introduced an

extensive realignment for the system platform/archi-

tecture utilized, with the specific aim of optimizing

use of the combined application solutions SAP

NetWeaver BI-/SAP-SEM. As IT Manager Jos Luis

Checa explains, To begin with, there was a real need

for action to get the system performance and response

times up to a better level. At the same time, we also

endeavored to improve the cost efficiency for SAP NW

BI-/SAP SEM operation.

And on top of that, we also wanted to be able to

respond to a more intensive future use of the SAP

solution in a more flexible and straightforward way.

A significant trigger for optimizing the system per-

formance was the batch and online operation occurring

at the same time, in which extremely large data

volumes had to be processed in a very short time. This

mixed operation was called for in particular because

of increased processing requirements with the SAP

SEM consolidation of budget/finance data in Latin

America. The total worldwide SAP environment of

Gas Natural with over 5000 users is served centrally

from Barcelona, 7 days a week X 24 hours a day from

2 major computing centers.

Added value through a combination of the

tried-and-tested with the new.

A taskforce consisting of members of the Gas Natural

IT section examined solution alternatives for achieving

the objectives set out and evaluated these in detail.

The following innovations were adopted, which were

to be implemented as part of a project:

Implementation of a horizontal architecture model

for extending the database level based on Oracle

Real Application Clusters 9i with simultaneous

improvements on the application level, withoutchanging these technically.

Validation and certification of the infrastructure

architecture by SAP.

Introduction of the uniform operating system

platform Linux Red Hat with newIntel-based

hardware on the application and database level for

SAP NW BI-/SAP SEM use; but without funda-

mentally modifying the SAP solutions.


15/56

SAP on RAC at Gas Natural 13

Migration of the existing SAP NW BI-/SAP SEM

database to the new RAC database cluster Linuxplatform.

Extensive tests, so as to be able to check functional

correctness and carry out performance measure-

ments for the old and new environment.

According to IT expert Mr. Checa we opted for RAC

as we had positive experience with the Corporate Data

Warehouse used since 2000 and which currently has a

volume of 2.2 TB. At the same time, we were also

striving towards improving system performance.

The decision for Linux was justified on the basis that

a more cost-effective platform was associated with the

SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP SEM in comparison tothe Unix system used up until now in particular

through the use of standard Intel/-AMD servers.

Short project realization time great results from

the partners involved

The optimization project was realized in a time frame

of just 3 months including validation and certifi-

cation of the infrastructure model. The new SAP NW

BI/-SAP SEM system platform has been running since

January 2005. The system utilizes a 2-node Red-Hat

cluster with two Intel-based HP servers on the appli-

cation level.

The database level consists of a 7-node cluster with

Linux Red Hat 3.0 and Oracle RAC 9.2.0.5 as well

as the Oracle Cluster File System 1.0.13 on 7 Intel-

based HP servers. Formerly, Windows (Intel server)

was used on the application level and Unix (Unix

high-performance computers without RAC) on the

database level. In addition to the SAP validation/cer-

tification and the extension of the new SAP system

platform, the project work focused on database migra-

tion (size of the database: around 290 GB) towards

RAC as well as extensive tests with special test tools.

As Gas Natural IT Manager Mr. Checa recalls,Everyone involved pulled together wonderfully for

the work. That meant great results. The effective

teamwork between SAP, Oracle, HP and Red Hat

was a crucial factor for the success of the project.

The use of database clusters has meant that SAP

NW BI/-SAP SEM response times have improved

by an average of 144.5 percent.

Impressive productivity and efficiency boosts

Mr. Checa sums up what has been achieved as follows:The SAP infrastructure changeover has completely

fulfilled our expectations. We can benefit from the

SAP-validated and certified infrastructure architecture

model based on Oracle RAC and Linux in a variety

of respects for SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP-SEM use.

Measurements carried out by Gas Natural have thus

revealed that the SAP NW BI/-SAP SEM response

time have improved by an average of 144.5 percent

thanks to the use of database clusters. The level of

satisfaction among users has increased considerably.

Furthermore, the energy group can now realize

potential platform extensions, which may be neces-

sary because of increasing SAP NW BI/-SAP SEMuser numbers. All we do then is bring further RAC

nodes or servers into operation, states Mr. Checa.

In the Corporate Data Warehouse strategy of Gas

Natural, SAP NW BI/-SAP SEM (currently over 700

named users) represents a hugely significant element,

which is becoming increasingly more important for

the entire company operation. In addition, the SAP

database availability has improved further because of

the new system platform. If one (or more) RAC nodes

fail for some reason, the others immediately assume

their task(s). The three database administrators

responsible for the databases at Gas Natural are alsoresponsible for the RAC implementation.

Cost reduction through Linux

When it comes to the Linux platform, Gas Natural is

equally satisfied with the results achieved. More pre-

cisely: Linux allows us to significantly reduce the SAP

operating costs. Instead of special Unix servers, we can

now utilize more cost-effective standard Intel/AMD

servers. In comparison to Unix, the cost ratio is at

least 1:10, stresses IT expert Jos Luis Checa. Gas

Natural also wants to extend RAC/Linux to the SAP

IS/U application in future, in addition to the SAPNetWeaver Business Intelligence/SAP Strategic Enter-

prise Management. The objectives here: to reduce the

time frame with batch runs for accounts settlement;

but at the same time have recourse to cost-effective

standard servers, or improve system scalability against

the backdrop of continually increasing numbers of

customers. The planning for this is already underway

in the multinational and expansion-oriented energy

group.


16/56

14

Summary

Gas Natural has optimized SAP NetWeaver BI-SAPSEM use on the basis of Oracle Real Application

Clusters (RAC) and Linux. Thus, the multinational

energy group has boosted system performance,

increased IT cost efficiency and can also respond to

further SAP NW BI-SAP SEM use very flexibly in

terms of its IT capabilities.

Sector

Energy service sector

Internet address:

www.gasnatural.com

The most important challenges:

Improvement in the SAP NetWeaver BISAP SEM

system operation resulting from a change to the

user application, in particular via an overlapping

of batch and online processing

Cost reduction in the SAP infrastructure.

Project aims:

Introduction of new infrastructure technology

components for optimized SAP NetWeaver (NW)

BI-/SAP SEM use, with significant system or per-formance improvements.

Strategic realignment of the SAP infrastructure

for a more cost-efficient and future-flexible IT

expansion, based on a SAP-certified infrastructure

architecture model and standard IT Components,

without farreaching changes on the application

level.

Decision for Oracle RAC and Linux:

Experience already gained with the Oracle Real

Applications Cluster (RAC) solution.

Realization of cost savings via a platformmigration towards open source/Linux.

Highlights of the implementation:

Formulation of feasibility studies with concrete

project stages.

SAP certification for the new infrastructure

architecture.

Extension of the new SAP-RAC-Linux environ-

ment together with new Intel server hardwareand changes on the database and application level.

Close coordination between SAP, Oracle, HP and

Red Hat.

Extensive tests for the new SAP-RAC-Linux

platform.

Main benefits for the customer:

Above-average improvement in response times;

the level of satisfaction among SAP NW BI-/SAP

SEM users has increased demonstrably.

Future security through SAP validation and

certification of the new architecture model. Simplified scalability for SAP solutions based on

databases; more flexible SAP NW BI-/SAP SEM

extension.

Cost savings with the SAP infrastructure platform.

Basis for the use of cost-effective Intel/AMD-

based standard servers.

No general changes required for the SAP software.

Further increase in the SAP high availability.

Existing System landscape:

SAP R/3 Enterprise (4.7) and SAP IS-U (4.64) SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence 3.1 and

SAP Strategic Enterprise Management 3.2

Database

Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) 9.2.0.5

with Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) 1.0.13

Hardware

Hewlett-Packard HP

Operating system

Linux Red Hat AS 3.0


17/56

Certi f ied SAP on RAC Configurations for Windows and Linux 15

C E R T I F I E D S A P O N R A C C O N F I G U R A T I O N S F O R W I N D O W S A N D R A C

We have separate scenarios for Windows and Linux as well as for RAC 9.2 and RAC 10.2 (in controlled availability from 04/2006

on i.e. for selected customers)

1. Oracle RAC 9.2 on Windows x86 and IA64 (no support for x86_64)

Oracle 9.2.0.7 or 9.2.0.8

OCFS 9.2.0.7 or 9.2.0.8 for database, Oracle software and SAP software

Windows 2003 Release 1 (no support for Windows 2003 Release 2)minimum 2 nodes

SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Microsoft Cluster Services(SAP Central Instance can be co-located with RAC instances)

iSCSI only supported up to 4 nodes

Not supported:

crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit Ethernet, minimum

two cards) Infiniband raw devices

2. Oracle RAC 10.2 on Windows x86, x86_64 and IA64 (from 04/2006

on for selected customers)

Oracle 10.2.0.2 or higher

OCFS 10.2.0.2 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software Windows 2003 Release 1 (no support for Windows 2003 Release 2)

minimum 2 nodes

SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Microsoft Cluster Services(SAP Central Instance can be co-located with RAC instance)

SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Oracle Clusterware (SAPCentral Instance can be co-located with RAC instance on same node)

iSCSI only supported up to 4 nodes

Not supported:

crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit Ethernet, minimum

two cards)

Infiniband

ASM

raw decives

3. RAC 9.2 on Linux x86, x86_64, and IA64 for RHEL4 or SLES9

Oracle 9.2.0.7 or 9.2.0.8

OCFS2 1.2.0 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software

NetAppliance NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software

RHEL 4.2 or higher

SLES9 SP3 or higher

minimum 2 nodes without SAP Enqueue Replication

minimum 4 nodes with SAP Enqueue Replication (2 nodes for RACand 2 seperate nodes for Red Hat Cluster or HP ServiceGuard Clusterfor SAP Enqueue Replication)

SAP Enqueue Replication covered by HP ServiceGuard or Red HatCluster on two separate nodes (SAP Central Instance cannot beco-located with RAC instances on same node)

Not supported:

iSCSI Firewire crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit

Ethernet, minimum two cards) Infiniband Red Hat GFS

Veritas CFS ASM raw devices

4. Oracle RAC 10.2 on Linux on x86, x86_64 and IA64 for RHEL4 or

SLES9 (from 04/2006 on for selected customers)

Oracle 10.2.0.2 or higher

OCFS2 1.2.0 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software

NetAppliance NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software

RHEL 4.2 or higher

SLES9 SP3 or higher, minimum 2 nodes without HP ServiceGuardor Red Hat Cluster (Oracle Clusterware for SAP Replicated Enqueue),minimum 4 nodes with HP ServiceGuard or Red Hat Cluster for SAPEnqueue Replication (2 nodes for RAC and 2 seperate nodes for RedHat Cluster or HP ServiceGuard Cluster for SAP Enqueue Replication)

SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Oracle Clusterware (2 node con-figuration, co-location of SAP Central Instance with RAC Instance)

SAP Enqueue Replication covered by HP ServiceGuard or Red HatCluster (minimum 4 nodes are required, SAP central instance cannotbe co-located with RAC instance on same node)

Not supported:

iSCSI Firewire crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit

Ethernet, minimum two cards) Infiniband Red Hat GFS

Veritas CFS raw devices

Windows Linux


18/56

16

With this slogan, Dr. August Oetker Nahrungsmittel KG produces and markets a wide variety of produc

under the brand name established since 1891. In developing the first storable and ready-made bakingpowder in 1893, Dr. August Oetker laid the foundations for a corporate group which currently operates

on a successful international basis with around 21,000 staff in six different business segments.

Q U A L I T Y I S T H E B E S T R E C I P E

With Dr. August Oetker KG as a holding company,

the Oetker Group is also active in the beer and spark-

ling wine area as well as in shipping and financial

services In addition to the food business segment.

Companies from the chemicals industry, publishingand the five luxury hotels of the Oetker Group are

brought together in a further business field.

The Oetker Group achieved a turnover of 6.4 billion

euros in the financial year 2004 and is poised for

further international growth.

A business warehouse with minor faults

Preparations have been underway for the final aban-

donment of the mainframe world since 2001 at

Dr. Oetker. The necessity of conversion from OS 390

and DB2-based computer to Unix was out of the

question here.In 2003 it became clear that an anticipated and inter-

nationally available business warehouse (BW) solution

with DB2 UDB based on SAP was rapidly reaching

its limits. The enormous growth in the database led

to bottlenecks in the system extension. Tables were

sometimes defective and the system activation was

inconsistent in its execution. A typical result of this

was that no attributes could be added to strategically

important tables for recording and updating sales

customer data. Deadlocks were the order of the day.

We had to allow for at least one man day per week

on average for solving everyday problems, both inregard to the database and for the applications, which,

of course, was not a sustainable situation, states

Jrg Mucha, IT Organizer in the areas of Organiza-

tion, System Development and Business Intelligence.

For Mucha and his team, this meant an unjustifiable

extra workload as a result of programming and help

programs. Reliable reporting was also only possible

in certain circumstances or by indirect means in this

scenario. A reorganization of the system architectureappeared unavoidable.

Migration to new territory

In the summer of 2003, Oracle was given the chance

to prove that the problems extant could be solved

through a migration of the existing SAP BW to

Oracle9i.

The test migration from DB2 7.2 to Oracle9i turned

out to be more difficult than initially assumed. This

reason for this lay in the fact that, in contrast to SAP

R/3, SAP BW had been developed using a database-

dependent approach in certain areas while the SAP

migration tools (R3load) did not take these depen-dencies sufficiently into account. Despite these chal-

lenges, the results have convinced Dr. Oetker to move

to the database platform.

In December 2003, the Oetker Group concluded a

license agreement with Oracle for 3000 named users,

in order to replace the existing 53 DB2 installations.

The project began with the above SAP BW, the pro-

ductive conversion of this to Oracle 9.2 occurring in

the first six months of 2004.

After the success of these first migrations, the

systems of the Radeberg brewery and of Henkell &

Shnlein will migrate to Oracle in this and the

forthcoming years in addition to the ERP systems of

Dr. Oetker Nahrungsmittel KG.

The advantages of a SAP business warehouse whose

operation is based on Oracle gradually became all the

more visible. Despite the very complex systems with

over 400 Infocubes, the problems which constantly

occurred when using the previous database, such as

optimizing and locking, vanished into thin air.


19/56

Dr.Oetker, DB2 to Oracle migration f or SAP BW 17

At the same time, the Oracle database proved to be

more economical in disk usage. Another concept insaving numerical values and the use of bitmap indi-

ces, which the SAP BW only uses with Oracle as

standard, enabled disk space requirements to be

reduced by around 20 percent. The path towards

achieving this proved to be stony in many res-

pects, especially as the migration from DB2 to

Oracle and SAP BW represented a voyage into

uncharted territory.

A team of specialists from the Oracle Support and

Solution Center in Walldorf, SAP experts and the

customer Oetker succeeded in realizing the migra-

tion within a time period which was very reasonable

given the complexity of such an application. At the

same time, SAP had to supplement the existing

tools with newly developed reports which, after

transfer of the data from DB2 to Oracle, converted

the database in such a way as though the SAP BW

system were developed and setup with Oracle right

from the start. The process developed at Dr. Oetker

has meanwhile been successfully implemented with

further customers who have realized a similar migra-

tion. After the introductory phase, the system now

works with full stability at Dr. Oetker and is set to

be extended in the near future.

We are very satisfied when it comes to operationalreliability is how Dr. Franz Brggemann, IT Busi-

ness Manager at Dr. Oetker, describes the current

situation. We've finally eliminated the deadlock

problems. This and many other aspects were crucial

in our decision to incorporate Oracle as an integral

component in our entire CHESS business warehouse

in future.

Harmony in an international environment

In the next few years, the company is endeavoring

to harmonize all systems in the international group.

A new UNICODE-based environment with R/3, aBW and a CRM-System, in which the previous

systems are consolidated, were created under the

project name CHESS (Consolidation and Harmoni-

zation of the European SAP Systems). CHESS has

been productive since early 2004 and is continually

expanding through the integration of individual

national systems. The experiences gained from opera-

tion of the existing SAP BW systems was taken into

account when planning CHESS.

As the manager responsible, Frank Pickert, IT Head

of Dr. August Oetker Nahrungsmittel KG, is nowconvinced of the merits of Oracle: The growing

complexity of the applications at Dr. Oetker calls for

an operationally reliable database system with corre-

sponding growth potential. We regard the Oracle DB

as a strategic platform for integrating our affiliated

companies in a uniform BW, ERP and CRM frame-

work as well as for all further SAP and non-SAP

applications extending beyond these modules.

It was and is a good tradition at Dr. Oetker to always

opt for the products and services of the relevant

market leaders. This principle has been confirmed

yet again with the migration from DB2 to Oracle9i,

as Oracle remains the number one choice worldwide

for 70 percent of all SAP applications.

It will come as no surprise then that all CHESS

systems are based on the Oracle database.


20/56

18

Testo AG

Lenzkirch, Germany

Industry:

Specialist for

Measurement Technology,

23 Subsidiaries

Annual Revenue:

2004, 105 M

Employees:

1,300

Oracle Product:

Oracle Database

9.2.05

Key Benefits:

Improvemen

Amazing Improvements

Performance problems in response to constant increase in SAP usage and the announce-

ment that SAP would not support Unicode functionality for Informix forced the company

Testo to take action in its database utilization. A successful Informix-Oracle migration has put

this producer of professional test equipment in good hands. Various advantages were real-

ized by the platform change and not just those measured in monetary value.

T E S T O A G I N G E R M A N Y M I G R A T E S T H E I R

D A T A B A S E F R O M I N F O R M I X T O O R A C L E F O R

T H E I R S A P S Y S T E M

From the time Testo was founded in the year

1957 until today the company has conti-

nuously grown from a small to medium size

business and currently employs about 1,300

people worldwide (2004 sales: 105 million

euros). In recent years the expansion-oriented

company has achieved especially large gains in

growth. It was not without reason that the

Growth Plus Testo corporate group was ran-

ked among the 500 mid-cap companies with

the strongest growth last year. Today the

company from the Southern Black Forest has

operations worldwide with 23 subsidiaries.

Testo has always used its IT to efficiently

shore up its growth while also using it to

continuously improve efficiency at the com-

pany. For about 10 years the test equipment

specialist utilized an ERP system from the

Burer company together with HP hardware

based on the Tru64 operating system and a

database from Informix. In early 2002 Testo

turned away from the Burer ERP softwareand switched to SAP R/3, primarily to safe-

guard its future needs especially in considera-

tion of its new international orientation.

Nevertheless, where the operating system and

database were concerned Testo continued with

what was tried and true. We had built up

extensive Tru64 and Informix know-how that

we wanted to continue to be able to exploit

that explained Alexander Bhler of the Testo

IT team. For some time now Testo has employ-

ed various tools of the mySAP Business Suite:

SAP R/3 (4.6C) with the components FI, CO,

MM, PP, SD, QS and HR as well as mySAP

CRM (4.0) and SAP BW (3.2). Applications

for e-mail, fax and telephone are also used.

The HP hardware with Cluster File System

consists of two ES40 units, each with 4 Alpha

CPUs and 10 GB memory.


21/56

Informix - Oracle database migration at Testo 19

Negative aspects forced company to act

As he reports: The first problems surfacedafter about a year and a half with regard to

system stability and performance. We had

interfaced a number of subsidiaries to our

central SAP system, and this led to rapid

growth in data. Users complained again and

again about long, unacceptable response

times. The reason for these difficulties was

our Informix database. Of course Testo could

have gotten a handle on the problem to some

extent by means of additional server equipment,

but the company did not want to make any

cost-intensive investments in hardware.

When another disadvantage of the database

materialized the company felt compelled

to act. Testo wanted to utilize the Unicode

capability offered by SAP, because it was

expanding with large subsidiaries in Asia and

this required multi-byte representation of

character sets. After the IBM takeover of

Informix, SAP announced that it would no

longer support Unicode capability for Infor-

mix explained Bhler. That sealed long-time

Informix user Testos decision to migrate to

a different SAP database system.

The company scheduled three months for an

evaluation or market analysis for the purpose

of selecting the database system Testo would

purchase for its future SAP operations.

According to comments by SAP expert Bhler

The Microsoft Windows operating system

was excluded from the outset, and therefore

also the Microsoft SQL Server database. And

IBMs DB 2 was not under serious considera-

tion either. Therefore we focused our evalua-

tions on the Oracle and MaxDB databases.

Speaking in favor of Oracle according to Testo

was the fact that the prepared database isavailable on most operating systems, and as a

stand-alone database it is not preloaded on the

hardware side. The analysis also indicated that

a migration to Oracle would not require the

purchase of any newer, faster hardware. Further-

more, the Oracle RAC (Real Application

Clusters) would offer the option of additional

scalability, also without requiring additional

hardware. Another argument Testo offered in

favor of Oracle was said that SAP itself uses

the database for productive systems, and good

and meaningful feedback was obtained from

various customers who were given as referen-ces. That is how Bhler of the Testo IT team

portrayed the decision-making process.

Smooth database Migration without

any stumbling blocks

The Informix-Oracle migration ran like

clockwork and according to plan.

The key work steps were executed one after

another: First the creation of a client copy of

SAP R/3 and a client copy of mySAP CRM,

then transfers to a test system with Oracle,

a test migration with SAP Tools (Run time:About 50 hours), and complete integration

testing (including subsidiaries).

According to Testo the migration was

tested for about three weeks. During that

time period we were only able to identify

three faults, and it was possible to correct

these rat her quickly.

Alexander Bhler,

SAP Basis Administrator

Testo AG

The upshot of this heightenlevel of satisfaction and the

corollary reduction in demand

for our support is that the IT

team, especially the admini-

strators, can now devote their

energies to other important

tasks, projects for example


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20

processor load in the course of the day 18/11/2004

monthly overview October monthly overview November

processor load in the course of the day 20/10/2004


23/56

Informix - Oracle database migration at Testo 21

Afterwards work began on the production

migration that was to be executed over aweekend. The migration was started on a

Friday evening about 7:00 pm, and it was

completed by Sunday evening at 6:00 pm.

The primary tasks were: SAP Export from

production system using SAP Tool R/3exp

(18 hours); in parallel, installation and confi-

guration of Oracle on the production system;

SAP Import to the production system using

SAP Tool R/3load (6 hours); startup of the

production systems and testing. No errors of

any kind were found, and the startup of the

SAP production systems ran smoothly and

without any problems.

Funds for further IT implementations

In contrast to our Informix experience the

differences were quite astounding was the

assessment of SAP expert Bhler. He added:

Oracle is currently saving us a lot of money.

That is because in spite of further increases in

data volume and with the same hardware

and same CPU usage loading of the systems

has quite simply been reduced. Before Oracle

came along the load on the database server

was between 60 and 70 percent. Today it isbetween 20 and 40 percent. And the load on

the application server has also been reduced,

according to analyses by Testo. Before the

Informix-Oracle migration the data volume

was approx. 290 GB, whereas currently is at

330 GB.

Testo has an appreciation for the significance

of this reduction in server load. The bottom

line is that the company will not need to per-

form any cost-intensive hardware upgrades

in the foreseeable near future. And if it does,

it will always be possible to use Oracle-RAC

technology which distributes load to multiple

computing nodes.

Yet another improvement realized by database

migration, and one that is very meaningfulfor the mid-size company, is this: The IT

team hardly gets any more phone calls from

users with regard to performance problems.

The upshot of this heightened level of satis-

faction and the corollary reduction in demand

for our support is that the IT team, especially

the administrators, can now devote their ener-

gies to other important tasks, projects for

example, stated Bhler.

In his concluding remarks he revealed that

it is not just the SAP users who are satisfied

with the Informix-Oracle migration; manage-ment too is satisfied in light of the financial

advantages based on the fact that Oracle made

hardware expenditures obsolete. This meant

that funds could be invested in new SAP pro-

jects, e.g. in the introduction of mySAP ERP

for which Testo already has firm plans.


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22

The ODM Connector enables users of SAP Business Warehouse 3.5 to mine data seam-

lessly using Oracle9i Data Mining within the SAP Data Mining framework. This SAP-certified

solution gives users the powerful and scalable Oracle9iData Mining in-database algorithms

to extend and complement the SAP analytics offering.

O R A C L E 9 i D A T A M I N I N G C O N N E C T O R 1 . 1

F O R m y S A P T M B W

ODM CONNECTOR 1.1

With the seamless integration of Oracle9i

Data Mining and SAP BW 3.5 and SAP CRM,

the ODM Connector provides SAP customers

advanced analytics embedded in the Oracle9i

database. Data and business analysts benefit

from the wide range of state-of-the-art data

mining functionality that is exposed through

the SAP Data Mining framework.

With BW 3.5, SAP released an API that third

party vendors can use to connect their solution

to the SAP Data Mining framework. Oracle has

certified Oracle9i Data Mining with the official

BW-DMI 3.5 interface of SAP AG through the

ODM Connector. Integration saves SAP users

time and money to leverage Oracles in-database

mining capabilities.

The ODM Connector integrates all of the

Oracle9i Data Mining algorithms and provides

model viewers using the Oracle9i Data Mining

Browser. The Connector automatically maps

SAP data types and transparently performs

clean up and recovery actions.

Mining in the database provides SAP customers

with increased data security, as data need not leave

the database. Moreover, in-database mining is

scalable using Oracles Real Application Clusters(RAC), allowing all the data to be mined, not

just a sample. Avoiding copies of data, SAP

customers can maintain a single version of truth.

The ODM Connector allows customers to

leverage their investment in Oracle as most

SAP customers use the Oracle Database.

Because Oracle9i Data Mining is embedded in

the Oracle9i Database, mining results can also

be accessed through other Oracle tools, inclu-

ding Discoverer, OLAP, and Reports. Using

Oracle9i Data Mining, SAP customers can

achieve an overall lower total cost data mining

solution for analysis, development, and deploy-

ment while being fully integrated with their

SAP environment.

SAP BW 3.5

With BW, SAP delivers ready-to-go and easily

extensible reports, data infrastructure, and

mining models for selected best business

practice scenarios. The immediate benefits

of using this business content are reduced

implementation time and costs.

BW provides the Analysis Process Designer,

which enables a workflow-based, graphical

definition of the data mining activity. Users

choose from a palette of tools for identifying

data to mine, transformations on that data,

and mining activities, e.g., model building.

Oracle Data Mining algorithms are accessed


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Oracle Data Mining for SAP customers 23

SAP BW Analysis Process Designer workflow-based

specification of transformations and mining

All Oracle9i Data Mining algorithms are made

available in the ODM Connector as highlighted

in the Instance Upgrade.

As models are defined and built, they appear

in the Data Mining Workbench. Here the list

of available models and their status along with

the identifying vendor name.

The model viewing components of the Oracle9i

Data Miner Browser are also integrated with

the ODM-BW Connector. This enables users

to see the model details as defined by Oracle9i

Data Mining. For example, in the figure below

we see the rules produced by the Adaptive

Bayes Network algorithm.

SAP BW Instance Upgrade

SAP BW Data Mining Workbench

SAP BW Data Mining Browser model viewer


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24

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Data Preparation

BW-provided transformations

Automatic data binning as part of model

build and apply (scoring).

In-Database Mining

All model build and apply operations

occur within the Oracle9i Database.

Default settings for all Oracle9i data mining

operations. Ability to override and specify

settings.

Supervised Learning

Prediction of binary or multi-class outcomes

with supporting probability (e.g., assuming

A, B, C, or D as possible outcomes, B will

occur with 60% probability).

Real-time scoring performance for individual

records.

Attribute Importance

Identify attributes as important for predicting

a target attribute using Minimum

Description Length algorithm.

Most applicable for explicit attribute selectionfor Nave Bayes. Automatic attribute

importance/selection preprocessing is in-

cluded in the Adaptive Bayes Network

algorithm.

Naive Bayes Algorithm

Makes predictions using Bayes Theorem,

which derives the probability of a prediction

from the underlying evidence, as observed

in the data.

Naive Bayes cross-validation permits the

user to test model accuracy on the same

data that was used to build the model, rather

than building the model on one portion of

the data and testing it on a different portion.

Adaptive Bayes Networks Algorithm

Like Naive Bayes, Adaptive Bayes Network

(ABN) builds models based on counts

observed from the data.

ABN supports three modes of operation: build

a pruned Nave Bayes model, a single-treemodel, or a boosted multi-tree model.

In the single-tree model, ABN provides

model transparency with human readable

rules, e.g.:

IF MARITAL_STATUS = Married

AND EDUCATION_NUM = 13-16

THEN CHURN= TRUE

Model Evaluation

Confusion matrix for Naive Bayes and

Adaptive Bayes Networks models

Lift calculation for Naive Bayes and

Adaptive Bayes Networks models

Unsupervised Learning

Association Rules Algorithm

Find the occurrence and likelihood of co-

occurring events, e.g., Q, R, and S are

associated with Z, 452 times, with 78%

confidence.

Finds rules with support greater than a

minimum support and confidence greater

than a minimum confidence.

Filtered rules retrieval using ODM Browser

Clustering Algorithms

Enhanced k-Means Algorithm: The hierarchi-

cal, distance-based k-means algorithm

partitions the data into a predetermined

number of clusters. The k-means algorithm

supports only numerical attributes.

Orthogonal Clustering (O-Cluster)

Algorithm: Creates a hierarchical, grid-based

clustering model. The resulting clusters

define dense areas in the attribute space.

Clusters are described by intervals along

the attribute axes and the correspondingcentroids and histograms. O-Cluster supports

both numerical and categorical attributes.

It is particularly good in high dimensional

space (many attributes).

Example results: Records 12, 15, and 25 are

members of Cluster_1. Output includes:

cluster centroids, histograms per attribute,

and cluster rules.

Platform Requirements

Oracle9iR2 Data Mining

runs in Oracle9iR2 Data-

base on all supported

platforms.

SAP BW 3.5 SP05

including SAP J2EE

Application Server 6.40

is required.


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Delta Consult ing: RAC Services for SAP customers 25

Delta

For additional

information regarding

Delta Consulting,

please visit our website

at www.go-delta.com

or contact

Jack Tomb,

Partner at

610-558-1730.

Delta Consulting, Inc. is an SAP-focused consultancy offering extensive SAP consulting

services and Software Components for its SAP Customer Base. Delta has a strong

commitment to providing innovative and practical solutions that combine real-world

business expertise and products designed to extend and enhance the value and performance

of a customers SAP investment.

D E L T A C O N S U L T I N G

Our consulting services utilizes an extensive

database of senior consultants which average

over 9 years of SAP specific experience that

spans all SAP solutions and business servicesthat address the functional, technical and

infrastructure requirements of an SAP solution.

In additional, through our extensive Partner

network we can provide worldwide deployment

capabilities in the development area.

As a certified SAP Services Partner for over

10 years and a member of the Oracle Preferred

Partner Program (OPP), Delta Consulting is

pleased to announce its selection by Oracle

to extend its agreement to provide consulting

services for Oracle Real Application Clusters

(RAC). Using SAP with Oracle RAC offers a

unique solution for SAP customers already

running Oracle by providing them with a

total solution that provides high availability

and scalability. Our team includes highly

skilled and experienced Oracle DBAs who are

trained and certified in SAP basis administra-

tion.

Oracle9i RAC is the highly scalable and

reliable database cluster for mission critical

SAP solutions. Our commitment and focus

on this technology enables Delta Consultingto bring the best practices for migrating an

existing SAP R/3 4.6D installation from a

single instance Oracle database to a multiple

instance Oracle RAC cluster database confi-

guration.

Services to be provided by Delta Consulting

include:

RAC Implementations Database Migrations

Tuning and Performance Optimization

System Healthchecks

Backup/Recovery and Hot Standby Solutions

Over two-thirds of SAPs customers run their

applications on Oracle. With SAPs endorse-

ment and certification of Oracle9i RAC the

motivation to implement RAC includes:

Higher Availability

New Requirements

Maintenance window negotiation

More and more workplaces rely on

SAP R/3

More Flexibility

Dynamical growth by adding servers

Better reuse of equipment

Cost Savings

Buy cheaper servers (scale out)

Reduce maintenance costs

Realize Real ROIthe Rewards of Innovation.Let Delta Consulting provide your organization

with the infrastructure services required to

power your SAP environment.


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