How To handle Backlog and Overload in XI/PI Systems

SAP has revised it's document on How To handle Backlog and Overload in XI/PI Systems and published it a few days ago. You can download version 2 of the document from Note 1045751.
It's a handy document and it can teach you more about how XI works.

Correct procedure to Stop/Start your XI system

The SAP Technical Operations Manual does not provide clear details on all the steps involved in stopping/starting your XI system. Now SAP released the details in Note 870864 and have updated the Technical Operations Manual with all the steps.

RFC load balancing procedure 'Weighted Round Robin'

With Basis 7.00 Support Pack 15 SAP will release a new Weighted Round Robin load balancing procedure for RFC connections to your ABAP backend systems. This will ensure that load is distributed to ABAP servers based on their performance and not on a purely round robin method.. But you don't have to wait for Support Pack 15. You can also implement it as an advanced correction. See Note 1112104

Front-end printing with control technology

SAP has introduced a new front-end printing method recently. Have a look at note 821519. This method does not use SAPLPD and communicates directly with the Windows Spooler. You can now also choose which local printer to print to.Given you have the latest support packages it can even be used from 46C systems.

Functional Enhancements Schedule for BI in SAP NetWeaver 7.0

SAP regularly updates this nice document with the planned new capabilities of BI in Netweaver 7.0 in future support packages. It nice to see what they have in stall for us!

Netweaver 7.0 Support Stack 13 : Get All New Data in Source Request by Request

In SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SPS 13, the following enhancements are available in the data transfer process (DTP) in BW which is quite helpful in loading large datasets :

In DTP maintenance, you can specify that a DTP request is to get only one source request. By doing this, you can prevent DTP requests from becoming too large. Until now, when this option was used, only the first source request was retrieved. To get all source requests one after the other, the DTP had to be executed manually a number of times. You can now specify in DTP maintenance that the DTP is to get all new data from the source, one request after another. This makes it easier to process mass data using process chains and helps to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO). The function also has a positive effect on the process monitor display in the process chain log view: When a DTP retrieves all new data request by request, rather than displaying just one request, the system displays a list of DTP requests.

Source

ST03 Statistics Retention Times

When you install a new SAP system, it does not keep the ST03 statistics for very long times.
You can change the retention times , see the screen shot below.

Single-Sign-On : New Wizard

SAP recently released a new (web dynpro based) wizard to help you in stetting up Single-Sign-On (SSO2) in your WebAS Java system. You can download the wizard and it documentation from SAP Note 1083421.

BW upgrade to BI 7.0 - New Web Reporting

You've probably heard about all the new functionality that comes BI 7.o , especially around web reporting. You can actually upgrade to BI 7.0 "as is" without having to do all the BI-JAVA stuff but then you won't be able to use the new web reporting functionalities that come with BI 7.0 like :

• New BEx Web Application Designer (Unicode, Command Wizard, ...)

• Exporting to PDF and Printing

• Integrated Planning

• Drag&Drop (Analysis Web Item)

• Web Items (Container Layout, Menu Bar, Tab Pages, Button Group, ...)

• Formatted Reporting with BEx Report Designer

• Document Integration with storage in Knowledge Management

To use the new functionalities you need a BI-JAVA stack, in essence a Netweaver Portal with BI business packages installed on it. You can either utilize your existing Portal or install a dedicated Portal for BI Web reporting.

SAP has a comprehensive note regarding setting this, see Note 917950 - SAP NetWeaver 2004s: Setting Up BEx Web. Also check the handy attachments to the note .

One thing I can add to this : Please try and run this on a 64bit Portal as the BI reports use a lot of memory on the Portal's J2EE. The reason for this is that the query data is transferred to J2EE as a whole during runtime, and we how big BI queries can be! (Note 996600 - 32 Bit platforms not recommended for productive NW2004s apps, Note 1044330 - Java parameterization for BI systems)

List of SAP Network Ports

Struggling to remember all the network ports used by SAP? On the SDN there's this helpful document on all the SAP Network Ports.

Import/Export Configuration Objects in XI

When you export/import XI configuration objects from one XI system to another you need to define transport targets in the SLD.See this SAP Help document : http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/ef/a21e3e0987760be10000000a114084/frameset.htm

Enable Debug Mode in J2EE Server Node

Sometimes a developer asks you to make a J2EE server node debug able. To do this, launch the J2EE Config Tool (usr/sap//instance/j2ee/configtool) . Then click on server instance node and in the right pane navigate to the Servers Debug tab. There you must select the Debuggable tick box as well as the Enable Debug Mode tick below it.See the screen shot below.

Check if the integrated J2EE is running from SAPGUI

If you run a dual stack system (ABAP + Java) and want to check if the integrated J2EE is running (without logging onto the O/S or using web browser) you

can do it in SAPGUI.

Execute transaction SMICM, Menu GoTo -> HTTP Server -> Display Data

In the next screen look for the line 'J2EE Server operational = TRUE', this means it’s running, if not it will be FALSE.

Migration of ST03N statisitics during upgrade to Basis 7.00

In Basis release 7.00 SAP developed a completely new workload statistics collector to meet the requirements of large systems. After you upgrade to Basis 7.00, you can no longer display workload statistics data in ST03N that has been entered before the upgrade.

To keep the ST03N history data you need to export it before the upgrade and import it afterwards. See Note 1005238 and 1006116.

After importing the old data (for instance you old 46C system) the ST03N data will look like this :

I took about 45 minutes to export the data before the upgrade and about the same to import it again after the upgrade.

New transaction DBACOCKPIT

Another new Basis transaction that came with release 7.00 SP12 is DBACOCKPIT for monitoring the database, see note 1072066
SAP Note 1027512 contains 2 attachments with documentation about the topic.

SQL Server 2005 and transaction log backups

As of SQL Server 2005 you can run transaction log backup while the online backup is running. During the database backup the transaction log backup won't truncate the logs, that will only be done after the online backup is finished, see the following MS article : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345414.aspx

New transaction ST06N in Basis 7.00

AS of Basis release 7.00 there is a newer version of transaction ST06 (O/S monitor) called ST06N. Have a look, it's quite neat.

Running OS commands within SAPGUI

I know this not new but an easy way to run simple O/S commands (any platform) is to execute report RSBDCOS0 from sE38 and then execute the O/S command in there.

After runing report RSBDCOS0 you can type most commands in the yellow line and hit for results.

JSPM SP12 new functionality

With the latest JSPM support pack 12 you can now install additional usage types and you can also patch the JSPM seperately. See Note 104699 on this.

Changes not visible after Transport of BI 7.0 Web Template

You transport a BI 7.0 Web Template but after the import the changes is not visible in the report.Do get around this problem, clear the ICM cache in your BI backend system via transaction SMICM.See the screenshot below:

BI Workload Stats in Netweaver 7.0

Recently installed or upgraded to BI 7.0? You will find that when using transaction ST03N to view BI Workload statistics (for OLAP,data load stats etc) that it's empty.
This is because ST03N does not read directly from the RSDDSTAT tables anymore.
Using the delivered technical content you need to load the data from RSDDSTAT into technical infoproviders which is then read by ST03N.

See SAP Note 964418 and 934848 for more information on this new feature.

Setting Up BEx Web in BI 7.0

Did you recently upgrade to or install BI 7.0 and want to make use of the new functionalities of BI and Java?
Look at Note 917950 - SAP NetWeaver 2004s: Setting Up BEx Web.
It contains a few attachments which is very handy in setting this up.

Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 2 certified by SAP

Check out SAP Note 30478 - Windows Service Packs.
SAP now supports Windows 2003 Server SP2.

Here's 10 reasons why Microsoft wants you to install SP2.

SAP J2EE server node hanging on startup

Have you ever had that dreadfull experience of a SAP J2EE not wanting to start?

A few days ago I restarted a Netweaver Portal (7.0) server and it's J2EE server nodes "hanged" on status STARTING APPS.
I created a dump stack trace of one of the server nodes, searched some OSS notes and realized it was the Application Thread's that was not enough.I increased the MaxThreadCount parameter of the ApplicationThreadManager as per Note 950921 (using the Configtool) to 100 and restarted the Portal server again, it then started up OK. SAP recommends that for XI system this parameter should at least be 150.
Here's a screenshot of the affected parameter in the Configtool:




The reason for this problem could be additional applications being deployed to the J2EE which uses more application threads or changes to the behaviour of deployed apps so always be sure to check this parameter value from time to time.

You can uses the thread dump viewer supplied by SAP Note 10202246 to make reading the dumps you create in the J2EE easier to read. Here's a screenshot of the viewer :


The following SAP Notes provide good starting points for J2EE troubleshooting:
Note 764417 - Information for troubleshooting of the SAP J2EE Engine 6.40
Note 710154 - How to create a thread dump for the J2EE Engine 6.40