Before reading about the client copy in SAP we should get to know a little about the concept of client first. A client is a self contained unit in technical, organizational and commercial terms having its own set of table key ranges and user master data. At the kernel level data from different clients is kept separately.
In the where clause the client number is used by the application executed by SQL statements. The access to particular clients is limited by where clause, so data from several different clients may be contained in a table.
The following are client specific data examples:
Application Data – Material master data and business transaction data is included here.
Customizing Data – Document types, assignments and organizational units are included here.
User Master Data – User groups, authorization and parameters are included here.
By using the SAP authorization concept and company codes, several companies or subsidiaries can be integrated in a single client in the SAP client concept.
How to do client copy in SAP?
There are 3 client copy methods delivered by SAP. They are as mentioned below:
1. If we want to perform client copies inside a given instance then we can do so by local client copy.
2. If we want to perform client copies between different SAP instances then we can do so by remote client copy.
3. Another way to perform client copies between different SAP instances is through client import and export.
We can copy different data types like the users data, application data, cross client customizing and client dependant customizing by using the local client copy method. It is important to know that we cannot use the local client copy in SAP to handle objects from ABAP dictionary like ABAP reports, table definitions and so on. We have to use other instances to transport these objects through transport requests.
The difference between the other two copy methods is that in remote client copy method Remote Function Call (RFC) can be used to immediately transfer data across the network. In the other copy method i.e. client import and export, the data can be exported in files in a second’s time to the transport directory.
Prerequisites of Client Copy
A low system activity timeframe should be performed for client copy. You should not have any activity on the source system to have a consistent client copy. So you should lock the dialog users by disconnecting them. You also have to suspend background jobs using BTCTRNS1 report. Later on you have to use BTCTRNS2 to release the jobs. The data dictionaries between the source and target systems should be the same for remote client copies.
Client Copy in SAP
Tcode sccl is used to perform local client copy while scc3 is used to check the client copy logs. For remote client copy sm59 should be used to access the source client after RFC has been declared. Client import and export is performed in two steps: the client import option is used to import data in the target client and the client export option is used to export files in source client by checking on with /usr/sap/trans/data | cofiles.