What is SAP_LOCAL_DOWNPORT_ASSISTANT ?

There are many occurrences of term SAP_LOCAL_DOWNPORT_ASSISTANT across a SAP Notes and in ABAP reports delivered by SAP via the SAP Notes. One who is searching for the SAP Notes can observe this term very often. It was also my case.

Usually in the SAP Note there is a ABAP report mentioned in format NOTE_*. Where asterisk is a placeholder for not number (e.g. NOTE_2036310). After ABAP report is implemented there is a following text in its source code (example taken from the Note: 2042755 - Prerequisites: ABAP Dictionary enhancements, messages, and report texts for SAP Note 2036310):

* Generated by SAP_LOCAL_DOWNPORT_ASSISTANT Version 4.53 on 16.07.2014

* The individual coding starts at 'FORM update.' ( line 3.131 )

* Perform global search (menu edit - find) for "-- to get a complete list of changed objects

* Generation done for objects found in one of the following transports:

* BR1K053972

To me this indicates that the SAP_LOCAL_DOWNPORT_ASSISTANT is most likely internal SAP tool to migrate ABAP source code between different versions of NetWeaver ABAP stack.

Feel free to share your experience or observation about the SAP_LOCAL_DOWNPORT_ASSISTANT in the comments of this blog post.