SPDD stage when upgrading or patching your SAP system to the latest release level

SPDD is the first stage that an ABAPer will be involved at and deals with changes to data dictionary objects. These need to be dealt with first because if you have added none standard fields to SAP tables or you have added an OSS note from a future patch level which adds new fields to tables you need to ensure these fields are not deleted before you try loading data back into them. This stage can sometimes happen on client 000 depending on the type of upgrade/patching you are doing but your basis guys will know more about this. Your main concern should be tables where the patching exercise is trying to remove fields as this is where data will be lost. Things like search help changes will not result in data loss and can be added back in later.

Running transaction SPDD
When you run transaction SPDD you get a screen that looks similar to the following, with a list of all the objects SAP believes have been changed by the customer and may need checking.

You need to place the cursor on an entry and then click on the versions button. This then allows you to compare different versions of this object and see what SAP is about to do during the patching/upgrade process.

Much of the time you will see SAP is going to add a new field to its table and not make any other changes.


Alternatively SAP could just be moving fields which again should be ok to reset to original as SAP should be able to work out where data goes with table


As long as it not also trying to delete a field you have added or you require to remain it will generally be ok to select the reset to original option from the main screen. Even if it is also going to delete things like custom search helps you have added it can also generally be ok to reset to original as it will not lead to the loss of any data and you can then re-add the search help after the patching exercise.


If when you look at the new version it I going to delete a field you don't want it too, you need to action this immediately by clicking on the traffic light and re-applying the modification. You could also go directly to the object via SE11 etc and re-add your changes.

The thing to keep in mind is if you don't re-add something, when data is loaded into the new structure of a table will data be lost, as it will be too late to get it back after this stage.


Table indexes
Another situation could be regarding table indexes that have already be removed but still appearing in SPDD


And when you try and reset to original you get the following message saying it cant be reset


In-order to process this simply click the red traffic light and on the following screen click on the delete option (skip does nothing and returns to list and version management simply show object versions)


Next stage is the SAP SPAU stage
Return to SAP Patching home


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