Support Pack vs Patch
What is the difference between support pack and patch in SAP PI?
SOLUTION
Support Package Stack
- A Support Package Stack (SP) is a collection of bug fixes and feature modifications.
- Each Support Package has a collection of all the Software Components which make up the PI system.
- New Support Package (SP) is released quarterly (this may change depending on the PI release).
- All the components of the PI system should always be on the same SP release due to software dependencies.
Patch
- A Patch contains fixes for an individual Software Component, which belongs to a specific SP release.
- Several Java-based Software Components exist which are relevant to the PI system.
- Many fixes are released by SAP in the form of a patch, for each of the PI Software Components on regular basis.
- These fixes are released on a weekly basis depending on the PI release, the SP release and the specific Software Component.
- Please go through SAP document 1381878 in order to check the Patch Levels (PL) of the individual PI Software Components.
- Each Java patch for the PI SC's contain all previous patches e.g. the XIESR SP06 PL14 contains PL14, PL13, PL12 etc.
- Also, individual PI Software Components contains many dependencies (SAP document 1381878).