Client Concept:

If you remember while logging into SAP, you have mentioned the client of 800 ( or any other 3 digit number ).

Think of a client as a logical separator within an SAP instance. The name "Client" may seem a little weird for

describing a method of logically separating a database. However, in the days of SAP R/2 when SAP used to run

on a Mainframe, resources were pretty scarce and many customers hosted their applications on a single system.

And each of these logical systems were called as a "Client".

Data and processes happening in a client will not affect other clients ( To a certain extent ). For example, if a

sales order is created in client 810 and another sales order is created in client 820, they are totally independent.

A client provides clean logical separation of business processes. Similarly a customer master created in client

800 does not mean that the same customer master would exist in another client unless explicitly created.

Although most business data is different in different clients, there is some client-independent data as well. So

any changes made to the client-independent data affects the entire SAP instance.

If you want a list of all the clients available in the instance, goto Transaction [SCC4]. The following picture shows

all the clients available in an ECC 6.0 IDES system.

However, a fresh non-IDES ECC 6.0 SAP installation would by default contain clients 000, 001 and 066.

Client 066 is called Early watch client - This client is reserved for SAP to log into the system and fix issues.

Client 000 contains only customization data. This does not contain any master data or transactional data even in

a non-IDES system. Client 001 is a replica of Client 000.

Client Dependent Data

If you look at a client-dependent data - say Customer Master - KNA1 , there is a field called Client ( Technical

name is MANDT ). If you log into to the client 800, you will only see the data for client 800. However, the

database table itself contains data for customers in all the clients. That is the reason why you will always have to

specify the client while logging in.Typically master and transactional data is always client dependent. Even most

customizing data is client-dependent

To an ABAP developer, it might make more sense if we talk SQL.

SELECT NAME1 , NAME2 from KNA1 where KUNNR = "0000000001"

If you execute this statement from client "800" you will only see the results for customers in client 800. Just as

you expected, the system automatically adds a "WHERE MANDT=800" behind the scenes.
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