Extending NW Developer Editions (aka miniSAP) license

There are few resources discussing this topic that can be found out there on the internet. However every time I do the license extension I suffer a bit with it. Thus I providing this blog post to remind me how to do it for good 😃

First how to find out when the license of NetWeaver (NW) Developer Editions (aka miniSAP) will expire. Normally when you log into your system you get a below copyright popup which apart of other information (like last system logon date/time) reminds when the license will expire.

 

Another option is to see the same information from menu System -> Status -> under SAP System Data area:

  

Third option to see when the license will expire is t-code SLICENSE itself.

 

In case you haven’t logged into your NW developer edition for some time and you can’t remember the passwords or something like that so you are not able to see either copyright popup that comes after logon or you can’t login to your system at all as you getting the logon error like below just do the following. 

Use user SAP* and login to 001 client with password Down1oad. Nee to mention that password of the user SAP* depends on your particular version of the NW developer edition. Therefore the password I mentioned here may not be valid for all the NW developer edition that exit.

Now with regards how to extend the license. While you are in t-code SLICENSE notice the field Active Hardware Key. Open page https://go.support.sap.com/minisap select corresponding radio button System e.g. in case of  SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.52 SP 4 it is an entry “NPL - SAP NetWeaver 7.x (Sybase ASE)”. Fill up rest of the fields like Salutation, First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Hardware Key – that you can find in the t-code SLICENSE. Afterward just accept the license agreement and hit Generate button. Your web browser will prompt you to save NPL.txt file that contains the license.

Now you need to import the generated NPL.txt file into your NW developer edition system via the t-code SLICENSE. There is in INSTALL button available which will prompt you to browse for the NPL.txt file you just downloaded.

 

One of the issues one may run into I that there will be an error while installing the license file like below “Error when installing permanent license key”:

To fix this first an existing expired license needs to be removed in the t-code SLICENSE. Via menu entry Edit -> Delete License. Afterward import of the license file will be successful. 

Once all finished you can login with regular user like BWDEVELOPER and the extended license will be reflected on the copyright popup...