Re: SAP migration options

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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