My first experience with Extended Computer Aided Test Tool (eCATT) wasn’t much fun. In fact, I still cringe when I hear or say “eCATT.”
It would be fair to say that I still dislike eCATT. But the best SAP Functional folks are the best, in part, because they’re aware of every tool in their kit. And sometimes eCATT is the right tool for the job. In rare cases, it’s the only tool for the job.
You should know a bit about eCATT, even if you plan to avoid it, as I do.
Creating master data (and customizing, without customizing requests!) is a serious matter. Your data migration process better be executed properly and accurately. For one thing, it’s a tedious mess to clean up (archive) if things goes awry. Of course, as a Master Data Aficionado reading this article, you now have a plan for success.
Let’s begin by recognizing that your Site Master business process design dictates where and when you’ll be executing Site Master data migration.
Site Master Distribution is Best Practice in S/4HANA. If you’ve adopted that architecture then plan to execute Site Master data migration only in your Development Customizing Golden client. Then use Site Master Distribution to distribute those Site Masters to downstream systems-clients that require Site Masters.
A best practice in SAP Retail is that the following objects all have the same 4-character number:
This is true for all Sites: Stores, Distribution Centers, and Reference Sites of all flavors.
But this isn’t a system-constraint! Like many things that are described as a “Best Practice,” you can choose otherwise … and pay a price 🙂
A notable feature of S/4HANA is that, unlike ECC 6.0, a customizing request is not raised when creating or maintaining a Site Master in the Customizing Golden client. Given this, should a Site Master in S/4HANA be considered as master data or treated as customizing?
What’s more – perhaps, what’s worse – your Site Master process design critically depends on the answer to this “debatable” question. You better get this right.