Upgrade to BI 7.0 with non-ALPHA converted values in 0MATERIAL

Question

We are upgrading from BW 3.1C to NW2004s / BI 7.0.
While performing our pre-upgrade checks using RSRV, we found 93,000 of 1.7 million material records which have not been ALPHA converted. This may be a legacy from an earlier 2.0 to 3.1C upgrade where the ALPHA conversion was skipped because the ALPHA conversion would a take "too long"
Our client currently has 500InfoProviders and 500 Aggregates in a 20 terabyte database.
All of SAP's documention for BW upgrades insists upon ALPHA conversion prior to upgrade.
1. Has anyone experience upgrading without ALPHA conversion? I would like to have a chat with you.
2.  Does anyone  have an easy techinque for detminining if these values are used in InfoProviders? These values are invisible through "Maintain Master Data" This would helps us determine if ignoring or deleting the values is a viable option.
Thank you for your help,
John Hawk

Answer 1

Hi,
As per the standared upgarde guide ALPHA convertion check is not necessary for Upgrade from BW 3.1 to BI7.0.
Note 447341 specifies as shown bellow:
Upgrade from BW >= 3.0B to BW >= 3.1 Content.
In this case, the consistency of the data should be already be ensured by a previous upgrade. As a precaution, a check is carried out in the upgrade PREPARE.
Do not, therefore, implement the solution described under Section 2.1 in this case. In particular, it is not necessary to export a transport created from the BOM RSMD_ALPHA and would in any case result in errors (unknown syntax "R3TR" "TABL" "RSMDCONTCONVEXIT" or "Object R3TR TABL RSMDCONTCONVEXIT requires a catalog entry") because some of the objects no longer exist.
Check weather the error messages that you get is of type(R3TR" "TABL" "RSMDCONTCONVEXIT" or "Object R3TR TABL RSMDCONTCONVEXIT ). then you can ignore thouse error messages.
Refer to 447341.
Regards,
Srinivas.