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SAP declares support for SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008

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Great news arrived from SAP these days. SAP declared support for SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. Let's first talk about SQL Server 2008.

The SAP Final Assembly department signed up on SQL Server 2008 GA for Netweaver 7.0 last week. As in the last 11 years, we passed the Final Assembly tests using SQL Server 2008 CU2 without any flaws and problems. The GA declaration will be reflected or to a degree already is reflected in the SAP Product Availability Matrix. Please keep in mind that SAP supports SQL Server 2008 on the two 64Bit platforms of x64 and IA64 only. As Operating systems we look into W2K3 SP2 (64Bit) and W2K8 (as soon as SAP declares GA for it). SAP products supported for SQL Server 2008:

  • SAP products which are based on Netweaver 7.0 (SR3) including Netweaver EHP1. This would include SAP ERP based on ECC6.0, SAP Business Suite 7 (formerly 2008), CRM 7, BI 7, SAP EP 7, …
  • SAP PI 7.1 and future SAP releases

This is a great success for us, despite the fact that it now took nearly 5 months to get the official stamp. Reason for the delay of 5 months was a pretty simple one. We released SQL Server 2008 when SAP was in the midst of bringing their SAP Business Suite 7 through Final Assembly. We also were facing the most complex certification ever with SAP release upgrades taking place on the same basis release (CRM5 to CRM7). So the test matrix was substantial. But it is done now. For SAP documentation on the Upgrade from SQL Server 2000 and 2005 to SQL Server 2008, please go to: https://service.sap.com/instguides --> Other Documentation --> Database Upgrades --> MS SQL Server

Despite taking 5 months, it represents a significant shorter time than with some of our competitors where new releases need more than a year to find support by SAP due to the product quality of our competitor's products. This leads us to the quality of SQL Server underneath SAP products. This quality is not coming out of the nowhere or is a given because we have more clever developers. No, the quality of SQL Server running underneath SAP applications, is a result of hard work, enthusiasm, dedication of a lot of people in Microsoft and SAP. It also is a result of Microsoft's IT personal going productive with SQL Server Beta/CTP releases with their SAP ERP system. Behind this exercise there are countless hours of testing in various SAP systems within Microsoft, changing SQL Server CTP build every quarter once in production to make sure that the latest bits provide the quality necessary. It simply is a huge responsibility and huge quantity of work the SAP Basis team within Microsoft takes to provide this great kind of real-life environment with one of the most important software systems within Microsoft. Another huge contributor to this success are the two teams of SAP working on porting SAP software to SQL Server. one team sitting with me in SQL Server development, the other team sitting in Walldorf, Germany. Without their early work on new SQL Server releases and their enthusiasm supporting Microsoft IT, we couldn't run with SQL Server Beta/CTP releases in production.

Now let's talk about Windows Server 2008. SAP today announced support of Windows Server 2008 for their Netweaver 7.0 based products. The support matrix for SAP applications on Windows Server 2008 looks like the one for SQL Server 2008:

  • SAP products which are based on Netweaver 7.0 (SR3) including Netweaver EHP1. This would include SAP ERP based on ECC6.0, SAP Business Suite 7 (formerly 2008), CRM 7, BI 7, SAP EP 7, …
  • SAP PI 7.1 and future SAP releases. SAP did support Netweaver 7.1 based products since a while since SAP's own JVM 5 can be used for

The delay in supporting Netweaver 7.0 based products was caused by problems around Sun's JVM 1.4.2 support. Sun announced the availability of a 1.4.2 JVM for Windows Server 2008 on 01/15 (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/Sun-Microsystems-to-Provide-bw-14069911.html ). Meanwhile SAP also released the news of supporting Windows Server 2008 for NW7.0 (https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/windows ). Please check out he FAQ in the article about Windows Server 2008. Please also check OSS note #1054740. For running NW 7.0 based products you will need to download the new Sun 1,4,2_17 JVM according to OSS note #941595. When you are on the Sun website, please make sure not to download the _18 and _19 JVMs. These are not supported by SAP yet. You need to download the _17 JVM or JSE.

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