As discussed in Chapter 2, CTM includes a feature which supports reverting back to the configuration that existed on the system prior to applying the new change set. A revert change set is created when applying a change set on a system. For each business object listed in the change set, a snapshot of that business object as it currently exists on the system prior to be change set being applied is taken. This snapshot is added into a revert change set. The revert change set is automatically created in a released state, meaning the change set is in a state that it can be applied. The contents are preserved should the system need to revert back to this configuration. This revert change set is not presented in the user interface but it is applied on the system when the user selects 'undo' action on the original change set.
If issues are encountered after applying the transported change set then the revert change set can be applied on the target system by selecting the undo action, to revert to the earlier set of configuration data. After reverting, the system is returned to the state it was in before applying the transported change set. This is done by deleting the business objects that were newly added to the target system. The business objects that were updated because of the transported change set will be reverted back to the previous state using the business objects in the automatically created change set.
As mentioned previously, there is only a certain period of time during which the option to revert configuration data is feasible. Once live runtime data is created based on the newly transported configuration data, the revert feature can no longer be used as otherwise the configuration data and runtime data are out of sync.