Make the S/4HANA Custom Code Analyzer work for you

Inspired by SAP Mentor Owen Pettiford’s blog Beginners Guide to Transitioning to S/4HANA 1511 On Premise edition for Existing SAP ERP 6.0x users, I followed his recommendation on Business Logic to “Use the Simplification List to understand the changes and try to adopt as many as you can before the switch.”

This led me to the excellent blog Upcoming Tools for SAP #S4HANA Migration – the simplification database by Sven Denecken and subsequent SAP Note 2185390 - Custom Code Analyzer.

From there on, there are many options how to approach making the S/4HANA Custom Code Analyzer work for you. Based on my experience, for a low footprint analysis, if you do not have a SAP NetWeaver 7.50 ABAP system already available yet

Frank recommends:

1. Install a temporary sandbox SAP NetWeaver 7.50 system. An easy way to do this would be to create a respective instance in Amazon Web Services via the SAP Cloud Appliance Library as described in Mahesh Sardesai’s blog How to get around the issue of being on older Netweaver version for Simplification DB and complete in less than one hour.
2. Upgrade that system to the latest Support Packages. At the time of this blog these were:
   
3. Create a temporary sandbox system as an as recent as possible copy of the production system you plan to analyse.
4. Install the respective support packages as per SAP Note 2185390 - Custom Code Analyzer for the release of the sandbox system you just created system AFTER following the manual preparation instructions:
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   |Manuelle Vorarbeit |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   |GÜLTIG FÜR |
   |Softwarekomponente   SAP_BASIS                      SAP Basis compo...|
   | Release 700          SAPKB70012 - SAPKB70032                         |
   | Release 701          SAPKB70109 - SAPKB70117                         |
   | Release 702          SAPKB70211 - SAPKB70217                         |
   | Release 731          SAPKB73109 - SAPKB73116                         |
   | Release 740          SAPKB74004 - SAPKB74012                         |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   - Open transaction SE80
   - Select package BASIS
   - Create subpackage SYCM_MAIN
   - Use 'Custom Code Management' as description
   - Use 'BC-DWB-CEX' as application component
   - Use 'No Translation' as translation relevance (if this option is visible on the screen s it is relevant in SAP Systems only)
   - Set the flag 'Package Encapsulated'
   - Set the transport layer to SAP if you create the package in a customer system
   - Select package SYCM_MAIN
   - Create subpackage SYCM_ANALYSIS
   - Use 'Custom Code Management: Analysis of custom code' as description
   - Use 'BC-DWB-CEX' as application component
   - Use 'Developer Tools' as translation relevance (if this option is visible on the screen as it is relevant in SAP Systems only)
   - Set the flag 'Package Encapsulated'
   - Set the transport layer to SAP if you create the package in a customer system
   
   
5. Prepare the sandbox system for the repository download by scheduling program SAPRSEUB – this might take a while to complete:
   
   
6. Create a variant of report SYCM_DOWNLOAD_REPOSITORY_INFO that reflects the customer namespace you would like to analyse. The namespace /0CUST/ represents customer development objects starting with Z* or Y*:
   
7. Execute the variant you just created as a background job. The execution should not take long at all:
   
8. Execute the same variant in SE38 to download the S4HMigrationRepositoryInfoSID.zip file:
   
   
9. Download the latest support package of the Simplification Database Content from the SAP Service Marketplace. At the time of this blog this was CCMSIDB00P_2-80001018.ZIP Simplification Database Content Patch 2:
   
10. Upload the Simplification Database Content into your NetWeaver 7.50 system with report SYCM_UPLOAD_SIMPLIFIC_INFO:
    
11. Upload your S4HMigrationRepositoryInfoSID.zip file with report SYCM_UPLOAD_REPOSITORY_INFO:
    
    
12. Finally run report SYCM_DISPLAY_SIMPLIFICATIONS to see the results:
    

Especially important are columns Simplification Category and SAP Note, that explains the details.