The BASIS of SAP

Finding what tables and fields lie behind an SAP transaction

A standard BASIS problem is the generic “what is it doing and why ?” question. This could be in the context of debugging a program or process, or trying to work out what configuration changes are required to make something work. It generally occurs when the development or functional team have moved on, leaving someone who knows what to do but not why – usually a user (under pressure from their boss) who just wants to get the system doing what they’ve been told it should be doing….

However, your BASIS team (or person) has to be a jack of all trades, with not just a smattering of SAP functional knowledge, but also a working knowledge of Networking, Desktop PCs, the Operating System(s) and Databases(s) their SAP systems are running on and so on.

I’ve found that the best way of dealing with this need to know something about everything is not by trying to know everything, but by knowing how to find out everything. An example of this is comes from Jerome Mungapen’s SAPLOG, where he provides a useful reminder of some of the various ways of finding what tables and fields lie behind an SAP transaction:

Have you ever been frustrated trying to find which table and field a piece of data is stored in. You can see it on the screen, and the old faithful F1 – F9 results in some useless structure information. Or have you ever started looking at a piece of functionality you are unfamiliar with wanting to find the table structures behind it in SAP. Well this article shows my favorite five ways of digging under the hood to find out what’s going on.

Jerome lists five methods, but one of them assumes you have the time (and need) to get really in depth knowledge of a given area of SAP. I’ve listed the four methods I use (plus Jerome’s extra one) in the order I’ use them when closely examining or debugging a transaction I’m unfamiliar with.

Use a Different Field

If the technical information pop up shows a structure and not a real field, just try another field on the same area of the screen. It is surprising how often this works !!

Use Where Used on the Data Element

From the technical information pop up, select the data element then press Navigate to get to the Data Dictionary. Once there, press the Where Used button.

Trace Analysis

Transactions SE30 Runtime Analysis and ST05 SQL Trace can be over-kill for determining what fields and tables are being used, but can be used to see how (for example) configuration data controls how and / or when the fields and tables are updated. It’s also useful when dealing with Z or Y code, structures and tables.

SE80 Object Navigator

This is probably more useful for a functional person, and is not available on the older SAP releases anyway. However, if you know the program behind the transaction, you can use SE80 to find all the Data Dictionary objects (including tables and fields) associated with that program.

Environmental Analysis

For those requiring a wider understanding of how a given area works in the SAP system. Jerome’s explanation of Environmental Analysis says it all.

How To Create a Customised SAP Menu

You can provide ABAP users with a modified version of the standard SAP main menu without affecting the original SAP area menu S000.

For example, say you have created a transaction code called ( z123 – My Own Report ) and you want to insert it under Administration.  The specific user will be able to access My Own Report by clicking Administration -> My Own Report.

Steps :-

• Use Transaction SE43 – Area Menu
• Click the copy button.  Copy from S000 to ZMGE
• After copying, click Change (area menu ZMGE)
• Double click on Administration and add in your transaction code in the AreaMenu.
• Remember to Activate the new menu !!!.
• Goto Transaction SU01 – Maintain users
• Type in the user name and click the Defaults button
• Type in the new area menu (ZMGE) in the Start Menu field and Save
• The user will be able to see the additional transaction on their next logon.

Reporting Tree Integration

Prior to release 4.6A, only transactions could be put in to Area Menus. From 4.6A onwards, you can also put all the types of reports which are in reporting trees, in Area Menus. The system automatically assigns a transaction code to call the report from the menu. Please note that if you have already put the report in another Area Menu, no new transaction code is generated; You must use the unique transaction code already assigned.

The old Reporting trees could only be displayed, not maintained. To modify the contents of reporting trees, you had to convert them with a migration transaction (RTTREE_MIGRATION). You could then modify the contents with the Area Menu maintenance transaction.

Advantages of the new Area Menus

The new data structure has the following advantages:

* Delinking by reference technique
You can construct a menu from submenus which are maintained separately in different systems.
* Less restrictions
The new area menus have no nesting level limit like CUA menus. The allowed length of menu texts has increased to 75 characters.

Copying SCM / APO Livecache data for SCM 4.0 or higher

OSS Notes: – these will require a valid OSS ID
Note 632357 – Backing up Livecache data for SCM 4.0 or higher
Note 541644 – Backing up the data from the Livecache for APO 3.X

Background:
One of the issues when copying SAP systems that have external data, whether it’s for regression testing or any other purpose, is making sure that the external data is consistent with the SAP data.

APO / SCM systems are one such example, where most data is stored in the SAP database (supported by an Oracle, DB2, SQL Server etc database), and some is stored in a Livecache database, suppoorted a MAxDB database.

The SAP Livecache technology is an enhancement of the MaxDB database system that was developed to manage complex objects (e.g. in logistical solutions such as SAP SCM/APO). In these systems, large volumes of data must be permanently available and modifiable. One of the features is that in an optimally configured SAP Livecache database instance, all data which needs to be accessible is located in the main memory.

As of SAP SCM 4.0, the /SAPAPO/OM_LC_DOWNLOAD_UPLOAD program can be used to extract all transaction data (orders and stocks) from the APO applications (SNP, DP, PP/DS, CTM, ATP, TP/VS, and so on) in the Livecache and store it in the SAP database.

This ensures, so long as no updates occur in either source database, until the database copy is complete, that the SAP and Livecache databases can be consistently copied to another system. Once the SAP database is reloaded in the target system, the /SAPAPO/OM_LC_DOWNLOAD_UPLOAD program is used to reload the Livecache data into the target Livecache database.



Process:
When you run the /SAPAPO/OM_LC_DOWNLOAD_UPLOAD program (via transaction SE38), you will see that the program is divided into four sections:
Section A: Preliminary tasks (prior to the download)
Section B: Download (storing the transaction data in the APO database)

Section C: Upload (copying the master data and transaction data from the APO database to the liveCache)
Section D: Postprocessing tasks (perform these sometime after the upload)




Each radio button takes you to the appropriate transaction to execute the required task. Perform them in order, from A.1 to B.7
Once you have reached step B7 perform your SAP database backup, and build your target system.



Once SAP is running on the target system, and before commencing the reload of the Livecache databse from the SAP database, you need to ensure that the target SAP system is pointing to the target Livecache system. Use transaction LC10 to connect the SAP and LiveCache databases correctly.

Note that there are multiple connections to modify, so make sure you do this for each connection.

Once this is completed, you can perform steps C.1 to 13



Issues:
1) You need to have release SCM / APO 4.0 or higher to use this program. If you use APO 3.X, see OSS Note 541644.
2) If you intend to upgrade (for example, SCM 4.0 to SCM 5.0) at the same time, then you must not use the /SAPAPO/OM_LC_DOWNLOAD_UPLOAD program. Instead, folow the upgrade guide and use the appropriate upgrade program.
3) If you’re using the Rapid Planning Matrix application, only the status matrix is extracted because all other data can be regenerated using requirements planning (the alternative, of saving all of the RPM data, would take much longer).

Maintaining Customisation in a Productive System

It’s a common problem, and most Functional SAP people know how to deal with it, but just in case…. My customer wanted to modify table V77RCF_USR_SGRP (User Support Group in E-Recruitment) in a production system. SAP does provide this functionality for a subset of customisation tables, but occassionally (especially in newer releases) some get left out. You may also have a custom development that requires this functionality on an extra table.

OSS Note 77430 – Customizing: Current settings
OSS Note 356483 – Customizing: Current settings in the test system

As of Release 4.6 you can maintain this setting from directly within the IMG. Position the cursor on the corresponding IMG activity and select the menu options “Edit -> Display IMG activity”. On the following screen, select the tab page “Maint.objects”. There you can see a list of the assigned Customizing objects. By double-clicking on the corresponding line, you navigate to the Customizing object and can directly set the flag ‘Current settings’ there.

As an alternative you can also call Transaction SOBJ., to directly access the Customizing object, to set the flag directly.

The SAP code behind this assumes that the Client Role ( transaction SCC4 ) of the client you are working in is set to Production. For other Non Modifiable systems (where Client Role is Test, Demo, etc), you need to deactivate the transport connection for that particular object (if possible) as well.

As of Basis Release 4.6, position the cursor on the corresponding IMG activity and choose Edit -> Display IMG activity. On the following screen, select Maint. (Before Basis Release 4.6, position the cursor on the corresponding IMG activity, and choose Goto -> Document attributes -> Display.)

On the following screen, choose Objects in the area Technical attributes. In both cases the system displays a list of the assigned Customizing objects. The types “V” (View) and “S” (Table (with text table)) stand for view maintenance transactions, while type “C” stands for a view cluster transaction.

For type “V” and “S” objects, the transport connection for the view or table can be deactivated as follows:

Call transaction SE54

Enter the Customizing object (view or table)

Select “Generated objects”

Choose “Create/change”

Select “no, or user, recording routine” in the bottom part of the
screen

Save the change

For type “C” objects, you can deactivate the transport link by turning it off for all related views or tables. Follow the steps below:

Call transaction SOBJ

elect “Display”

Select “Position”

In the field “Object”, enter the Customizing object (View cluster) and the value “C” into the type field.

Select the Customizing object and select “Piece list” in the
navigation

All views or tables contained in the view cluster are displayed.

Deactivate the transport link for these views or tables as described above.

Now the Customizing object is no longer part of the transport connection and so is excluded from the changeability check.

Note:
Perform these changes in you development / customisation system, and transport through to production.
The change is active in all clients of the system.
You can also change the Customizing object in a locked client (independent of the client role).
Once the above steps are done, it is no longer possible to manually transport entries of the view or table.

How to determine SAP Table Buffer Requirements

I had one of those ‘doh’ moments during a recent SAP performance performance tuning workshop. The instructor, Tim Bohlsen, pointed out a remarkably easy way to discover how large a table buffer that a running ABAP WAS system instance requires to reduce buffer swaps to zero.

This is important because the easiest way to reduce your database I/O in ANY application, SAP or not, is to reduce the need to go to disk. Keeping data in the Application buffer improves response time by reducing the time (both the CPU time and the I/O time) requiried by the DBMS to continually retrieve that data.

In the case of an ABAP engine, you use transaction ST02 to determine if there is any swapping going on in the first place. In the case shown below, both table buffers have some swapping – it is a relatively well tuned HR/PY system, so there isn’t much table buffer swapping despite the sytem being up for two months. Oh, and there isn’t much point in doing this on any other system except the one you wish to tune as it will be extremely difficult to replicate the load of the target system.

Select the images to open larger versions in another window or tab

In this case, we will look at the Generic Key Buffer, since it is the the worst of the two Table Buffers. Selecting the buffer in question, by double cliking on the line, results in a screen showing a little bit more detail. This has some usefull navigation features. As shown below, we are looking at the current status of the buffer, but we have the option to look at the history of the buffer. This can give us an idea of when the swaps occurred, which we can then track back to certain workloads. Moe importantly, we can look at the current status of the individual objects in the buffer.

Now we have the statistics for individual tables (or parts thereof ) that are currently loaded into this Buffer. This data is usefull in and of itself, which I will touch on in a later post, but first, select the Next View button.

The value highlighted below is the total value for Size maximum [bytes]. This is the sum of the highwater mark for each table that has been loaded into the buffer so far. In other words, the amount of storage required to accept all data requests that should be buffered, without swapping, since the instance was started.

Now, you could put this value straight in to the appropriate profile parameter and restart your system, but there are a couple of caveats.

1. If a table is marked to be buffered, but has not been read yet, it will not be included in the buffer or, therefore, the buffer size yet,
2. You need to examine the detail of both the snapshot and the history to determine if the correct tables are buffered or if they are correctly buffered (the Invalidations total suggests that there is some work to do in this area), and, most importantly,
3. This does not tell you if you have sufficient storage available to fulfill any increase in the buffer size without causing problems elsewhere

So, make sure your system has been through a pay run, or a month-end (or whatever the appropriate business cycle is) before you use this method to measure the requirement,
use sappfpar to validate the storage requirements of your new profile parameters, and
be aware that this is only the first step towards efficient use of all of the available resources.

This won’t fix all your performance problems. However, it is an important first step. Your database vendor may make the most efficient database engine there is, but calling any DBMS to get data will always be slower than getting that data from memory.

Howto avoid irj/portal in the portal URL

Actually, its a bit of a cheat. What happens is that you’re telling the J2EE WAS that if there is no page specified (such as …/index.html), then open the page …/irj/portal.

1. Go to j2ee visual administrator
2. For each Server, Navigate to Cluster-> Server -> Services -> HTTP Provider
3. Enter /irj/portal in the Start Page Text Field
4. Click on Save Properties
5. Restart this service from visual administrator

Access http://yourserver.yourdomain.com and your portal login page should come up.

This means that your SAP J2EE Engine Start Page will still show up if you http://yourserver.yourdomain.com/index.html

Upgrade to SAP ECC 6.0

I’m posting these links for myself and anyone else who may be required to lead or assist in an upgrade to ECC6.  They point to blog entries the SAP Developer Network, which is an SAP sponsored and developed community site for all things SAP.

How To Tackle Upgrades to SAP ERP 6.0
This blog addresses frequently asked questions about the upgrade to SAP ERP 6.0, asked by customers at user group events, projects, and other occasions.  Mar. 20, 2008

How To Tackle an Upgrade (2): Technical Upgrade
In this blog, Martin Riedel, Senior Vice President and head of the SAP Global Upgrade Office, addresses frequently asked questions from customers about upgrading to SAP ERP 6.0. The questions have been gathered at user group events, on projects, and during the course of other occasions. Part 2 focuses on the technical upgrade.  Mar. 31, 2008

How To Tackle an Upgrade: Implementing Functional Enhancements
The second phase of the upgrade approach is to implement functional enhancementes. This blog post gives an overview of this phase and explains how crucial project management is. Apr. 13, 2008

How To Tackle an Upgrade (4): Implementing Strategic Enhancements
Part 4 of this blog describes how an upgrade to SAP ERP 6.0 provides the perfect basis for enabling your IT landscape for enterprise service oriented architecture (SOA) and what’s in it for you.  Apr. 28, 2008

How To Tackle an Upgrade (5): Upgrade Services for the Planning Phase
This blog post describes which services can assist you in the planning phase of your upgrade project to SAP ERP 6.0 May. 13, 2008

How to Tackle an Upgrade (6): Enhancement Packages for SAP ERP
Part 6 of this blog series focuses on some of the most frequently asked customer questions regarding enhancement packages, support packages, and upgrades.  May. 20, 2008

SAP Upgrades (7): Customers’ Experiences and Pain Points – What about Yours?
Part 7 of this blog gives you an insight into customer feedback data about SAP upgrades: What are the main challenges and pain points when planning and performing an upgrade?  Jun. 21, 2008

SAP Upgrades: When Should my Organization Convert to Unicode?
Part 8 of this blog answers one of the most frequently asked customer questions: When upgrading to SAP ERP 6.0, do we have to convert to Unicode?  Jul. 5, 2008

SAP Event Processing

An SAP event is a “flag” that is created by using transaction SM62 View and Maintain Background Events. The commonest use of Events is to trigger jobs. Events can be triggered from the Operating System or from within SAP – either within ABAP programs and Function modules or from Transaction SM64.

Create an Event in transaction SM62. Select the Maintain radio button next to User Event Names and execute. This will present tyou with the Edit User Events screen. You can add change or delete user events from here.

To use this Event as a trigger, create a job via transaction SM36. You specify the Event that will trigger this job using the Start Condition button. On the Start Condition screen, select option AFTER EVENT. The After Event fields will open for input. Fill these in and Save.

You can see which jobs are waiting for events by looking at table BTCEVTJOB (via transaction SE16). This is the system’s way of keeping track of which jobs are in the queue waiting for an event to occur. The EVENTID column contains those Events that will submit a Job. You should see several System Events here.

Now, once the event is triggered this newly created job will execute. The event can be triggered via transaction SM64 or from the Operating System (see below).

To get the event triggered from the Operating System, log into the <sid>adm user id (at the Operating System level) level and go to directory /usr/sap/<sid>/SYS/exe/run. Note that in the Unix / Linux implementations, there is an alias ‘cdexe’ that will get you there as well. Run the SAPEVT executable as follows :

sapevt <event_name> -t pf=<instance_profile_directory_and_name> nr=<sys_number>

Example:

sapevt roberts_test -t pf=/usr/sap/DEV/SYS/profile/DEV_DVEBMGS00_server001 nr=00

This will raise the event, and cause the job scheduled within SAP to execute. Once the job has executed the SAP event that was in the table BTCEVTJOB will disappear.

Every time a Background Job is run, an entry is created in table TBTCO. This contains entries such as JOBNAME, EVENTID, EVENTPARM, JOBCLASS etc. This means that once you’ve found your job name in this table (using SE16) you can double click on its entry and see that it was executed via an event.

Operating System TP / TMS / CTS unconditional modes

The TMS / CTS functions are  a front end to the TP commands at the operating system level. If you use the operating system commands, you face the challenge of replicating the options available via the SAP GUI front end.  These options are controlled by using the Unconditional mode. An example of how to use these is shown below. 

host:prdadm 2> tp import L6BK162625 PA1  U client=100
This is tp version 340.16.38 (release 640)
This is R3trans version 6.13 (release 640 – 07.01.08 – 14:25:00).
2EETW000 T5QTM table class is ‘C’. Entries are only imported to client ’000′.
2EETW000 T5QTX table class is ‘C’. Entries are only imported to client ’000′.
R3trans finished (0008).
tp finished with return code: 8
meaning:
  A tool used by tp produced errors
host:prdadm 3> tp addtobuffer  L6BK162625 PA1
This is tp version 340.16.38 (release 640)
Addtobuffer successful for L6BK162625
tp finished with return code: 0
meaning:
  Everything OK
host:prdadm 4> tp import L6BK162625 PA1  U128 client=100
This is tp version 340.16.38 (release 640)
This is R3trans version 6.13 (release 640 – 07.01.08 – 14:25:00).
R3trans finished (0000).
tp finished with return code: 0
meaning:
  Everything OK
host:prdadm 5>

The U stands for unconditional force, similar to the options that you can select when importing via the SAP GUI.

0: Overtaker – change requests can be imported without deleting it from the buffer. Usually, this is followed sooner or later by an import using unconditional mode 1 to import another transport in the correct sequence.

1: Import the transport again.

2: Allow transport to overwrite SAP or System originals.

3: Allow transport to overwrite system-dependant objects.

5: Allow transport to contain source systems other than the integration system (usually used only when importing into Development or Consolidation system).

6: Allow transport to overwrite objects in unconfirmed repairs.

8: Allow transport to ignore limitations caused by the table classification (see the example above).

9: Allow transport to ignore that the system is locked for this kind of transport.

 

Remember that the location to run the tp addtobuffer and / or tp import from is operating system dependent:
(Windows): \\$(SAPTRANSHOST)\sapmnt\trans\bin
(UNIX): /usr/sap/trans/bin

SAP HR/PY Structural Authorisations

I had added a new developer to the customer’s HR/PY landscape, but they couldn’t see any of the Employee Data in the Development or QA system. According to SU01, the roles and profiles were identical to a developer who could see the data.

After hunting around my disks (because it has happened to me before !!), I found a note about Table T77UA, which has prompted this reminder to both myself and any one else who has to work with HR/PY Developers.

HR Security

HR Security comprises the General Authorisation Profiles as managed by Role Maintenance (transaction PFCG), plus Structural Profiles.  To assign Structural Profiles, you use table T77UA (User Authorizations = Assignment of Profile to User).  The Structural Authorisation’s themselves are specified in the T77PR table (Definition of Authorization Profiles).  You protect structures (or substructures) of the Organisational Chart by making relevant entries in this table.

1. When you use both Structural and General Authorisations , a user’s Overall Profile is determined from the intersection of the two.
2. The structural profile determines which object in the hierarchical structure the user has
   access to;
3. The general profile determines which object data (infotype, subtype) and which type of
   authorization (Read, Write, …) the user has for these objects.
4. The access mode for authorization objects in HR Master Data is determined in the AUTHC field (Authorization Level).

Steps to do Structural Authorisation:

1. Use transaction OOAC (updates table T77S0) to Activate the Structural Authorisation switch
2. Use transaction  OOSP (updates table T77PR) to Create Structural Authorisation profiles. You protect (sub)structures by making relevant entries in this table.
3. Assign regular Role Authorisation via PFCG.
4. Assign Structural Authorisation profile to User Id. Apparently, some releases have a report RHRPROFL0 that you can use to assign the object id. However, I use transaction SM30 to update Table – T77UA (User Authorizations = Assignment of Profile to User).
5. Organizational Plans are created using PPOCE