Explain Client Administration & Client Copy in SAP

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Basisbeginner

Client Administration & Client Copy

Understanding SAP clients as self-contained business units within one system, and how to copy, configure, and refresh them.

A client is a self-contained business entity inside one SAP system. One system, one database, one set of programs — and several clients that share none of their business data.

A client is like a separate tenant floor in the same office building (one physical SAP system) - each floor has its own furniture and files (data) but shares the same building infrastructure (programs, database engine, kernel).

Key Concepts

You choose one at logon, alongside user and password.

What is shared and what is not.

    client-independent   ABAP programs, classes, DDIC tables and their
                         structure. One copy, visible from every client.
    client-dependent     customizing, master data, transaction data.
                         Separate per client, invisible to the others.

The mechanism is a column. Client-dependent tables carry MANDT as the first key field, and Open SQL adds the current client to every query automatically.

MANDT

This is why a developer's change to a program appears instantly in all clients, while configuration made in client 100 does nothing in client 200.

SCC4 sets what a client is for. The role and change options decide whether changes are recorded to transports, and whether cross-client customizing may be changed at all.

SCC4

    Customizing client   changes recorded; the source of transports
    Production client    no changes allowed
    Test / sandbox       changes allowed, often not recorded

A production client set to allow changes is an audit finding, and a development client set not to record them produces configuration that exists nowhere else and cannot be transported.

Copying a client. SCCL copies within the same system; across systems it is a client export and import.

SCCL

The profile decides what comes along:

    SAP_CUST   customizing only, no master or transaction data
    SAP_ALL    everything, including transaction data
    SAP_UCUS   customizing plus user master records

SAP_CUST is the usual choice for refreshing a sandbox from a golden configuration client. SAP_ALL on a production-sized system copies the entire dataset — many hours, heavy database load, and a planned downtime. SCC3 shows the progress and the log.

SAP_CUSTSAP_ALLSCC3

The part that is always underestimated: what to do afterwards. A copy of production into a test client brings production's settings with it, and some of them are now dangerous:

  - RFC destinations still point at production systems
  - Background jobs are scheduled and will run
  - Output devices will print, and interfaces will send real messages
  - Customer and employee data is real personal data in a system with looser access

The last one is a data-protection issue, not a tidiness one. A test client holding real customer records must either be scrambled or protected to the same standard as production — which is usually the reason the scrambling gets done.

And the practical constraint. The database grows by roughly the size of what you copied, and a client delete is slower than the copy was. Clients are cheap to create and expensive to remove, so a landscape tends to accumulate them until somebody plans the cleanup.

What the interviewer is probing.1. "What is the difference between a local, remote and client export copy?" Probing: the options. Stalls: "They are the same." Moves up: local within one system, remote across systems over RFC, and export-import via files for large or cross-landscape moves.

2. "Why would you copy only customizing without data?" Probing: judgement. Stalls: "To save time." Moves up: to build a clean test client with the configuration but no transactional noise, which is also far faster and smaller.

3. "What must you check before a client copy?" Probing: the preparation. Stalls: "Space." Moves up: free database space, no users logged in, a current backup, and that the client role and change options are set correctly afterwards.

4. "Why set the client to not modifiable in production?" Probing: the control. Stalls: "Convention." Moves up: so changes arrive only through transports, which is what makes the landscape auditable.