Thread: SAP migration options

I'm curious if anyone has any experience with migrating an existing SAP
ERP system to run on top of PostgreSQL. Assuming that moving off of SAP
to another ERP system isn't really an option, are there any options for
using PostgreSQL as the database backend?

(I suspect the answer is "no", but I thought I'd ask around and see if
anyone has tried this in the past.)

-Neil

Neil Conway wrote:

> I'm curious if anyone has any experience with migrating an existing SAP
> ERP system to run on top of PostgreSQL. Assuming that moving off of SAP
> to another ERP system isn't really an option, are there any options for
> using PostgreSQL as the database backend?
>
> (I suspect the answer is "no", but I thought I'd ask around and see if
> anyone has tried this in the past.)
>
> -Neil


Neil,

SAP and PostgreSQL are not an option.
Compared to the costs of a SAP system the costs for the database (even
Oracle) are ridiculous.
As far as I know only 6% of the costs caused by a SAP system are related
to the database.
I don't think that anybody would risk using a database which is not
supported by SAP.

Most likely we will never be taken into consideration by SAP.
By the way: Not even SAP DB (which is a bad thing) has been used
seriously by SAP.

    Cheers,

       Hans

In the last exciting episode, neilc@samurai.com (Neil Conway) wrote:
> I'm curious if anyone has any experience with migrating an existing SAP
> ERP system to run on top of PostgreSQL. Assuming that moving off of SAP
> to another ERP system isn't really an option, are there any options for
> using PostgreSQL as the database backend?
>
> (I suspect the answer is "no", but I thought I'd ask around and see if
> anyone has tried this in the past.)

There is _no way_ that this is a realistic option.

R/3 versions are strongly tied to particular database versions,
whatever the database may be.

For instance, I was involved with a deployment running on Oracle on
OSF/1 (later known as Digital Unix and other things).  Hardware
choices got constrained, and plans to upgrade required buying
_obsolete_ hardware on a secondary market because the versioning had
to be done in a lock-step fashion based on what SAP was supporting.

At each point in time, we needed to have the simultaneous support of:

 - Oracle supports running version X on OSF/1 version Y
 - SAP supports version X of Oracle and version Y of OSF/1

The latter part turned out to be really troublesome :-(.

In order to run an R/3 instance atop PostgreSQL, it would be
_absolutely necessary_ for SAP AG to build a release of R/3 that is
written to be compatible with PostgreSQL.  And it would be more
specific than that...

You'd be running R/3 version [something] on Hardware/OS platform Foo
[let's say, Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 2.1], alongside some
specific deployment of PostgreSQL version 7.4.4.

An upgrade to PostgreSQL 7.4.5 would require that SAP AG do another
R/3 release.  SuSE Linux version something else?  Another R/3 release.
Solaris?  Another R/3 release.  IBM AIX?  Yup, another R/3 release.

Those releases of R/3 would have to be prepared by SAP AG; nobody else
can do it...
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Christopher Browne wrote:
> There is _no way_ that this is a realistic option.

Fair enough :) (and pretty much what I expected...)

Thanks for the information, everyone.

-Neil