Landscape
The system landscape is the arrangement of connected SAP systems, typically Development, Quality Assurance and Production, through which changes flow in a controlled way. It is the architectural backbone of safe SAP change management.
For testing to be meaningful, QAS must resemble PRD (via periodic system copies/refreshes), and transports must be imported in the right sequence.
- The standard is DEV → QAS → PRD.
- Unidirectional transport flow protects production: it guarantees that anything live has been through test, and it gives a clean…
- A sandbox for experimentation, outside the transport path.
- Watch out: Changing production directly.
The three-system landscape
The standard is DEV → QAS → PRD. Configuration and code are built in DEV, tested in QAS, and run the business in PRD. Changes move only forward, packaged as transports, so nothing reaches production without passing through quality assurance.
Why one direction only
Unidirectional transport flow protects production: it guarantees that anything live has been through test, and it gives a clean, auditable trail of every change. Making changes directly in PRD is the cardinal sin of SAP operations.
Extended landscapes
- A sandbox for experimentation, outside the transport path.
- A pre-production system mirroring PRD for final validation.
- Separate landscapes for connected systems (BW, PI/PO, Solution Manager).
Keeping systems in sync
For testing to be meaningful, QAS must resemble PRD (via periodic system copies/refreshes), and transports must be imported in the right sequence. Landscape drift is a common cause of "works in QAS, fails in PRD".
Common pitfalls
- Changing production directly.
- Letting QAS drift from PRD, invalidating tests.
- Importing transports out of sequence.