The BASIS of SAP

SAP Spool issue – affects all Releases

SAP have detected a problem in the spool area which affects all customers in the world regardless of the SAP release and any support package level.

As soon as the retention time of a spool request exceeds 2009/12/31 a wrong date 2100/01/01 is entered during creation of the spool request. As a consequence these spool requests will not be deleted anymore from the spool reorg jobs. Using the default retention period this affects all spool requests on each SAP system in the world created since 2009/12/23.

OSS Note 1422843 already contains the correction instructions and the relevant kernel patches for 3.1 –> 46B (one patch) and 46c –> 7.xx (another patch). There’s nothing for anyone (unfortunate enough to be) running any of the original 2.x systems yet.

It is a little ironic – An old friend and I were discussing Y2K and all that in a general “what were you doing ten years ago ?” manner on New Years Eve. Should I tell her that SAP had a Y2K+10 ?

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:

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

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.

Critical security flaw in SAP GUI

An ActiveX vulnerability detected in the SAP GUI may possibly be exploited by an attacker to gain access to critical files and sensitive data. According to an advisory issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the vulnerability can be exploited remotely by an unauthenticated hacker. The flaw is in the ActiveX control, MDrmSap, which could crash Internet Explorer when handling malicious code, US-CERT said. The advisory also states that the vulnerable ActiveX control can be disabled in Internet Explorer by setting the appropriate kill bit, or by disabling ActiveX in the Internet Zone,

The Danish vulnerability clearinghouse Secunia gave the flaw a highly critical rating. To exploit the flaw, an attacker must trick a user into viewing a malicious website or email message, Secunia said.

SAP issued an update correcting the flaw. If you don’t have an OSS ID, you can view a PDF copy of the note – However, the one on the SAP site is guaranteed to be up to date, whereas the one here may not be.

List of OSS Notes in a Support Pack

If Project Managers or Developers want to know if a particular OSS note will be implemented by a particular Support Pack, you can direct them (via http://service.sap.com/notes ) to the details of the particular Note.  Sometimes, though, there is a large number of OSS notes, or they want to know ALL the Notes implemented in a given Support pack.  You can get this list via the SAP Support Portal.  The first step is to search the Software Distribution Centre ( http://service.sap.com/swdc ) for the Support Pack that you wish to list the Notes for.

Note that the Search Term field requires the full name of the Support pack, in this case SAPKE47080, not KE47080.CAR (which is the name of the download)

Searching for the Support Pack (or a list of Support packs, if you get the Search Term syntax correct) will produce a formatted list of the Support Pack(s).

You may recognise this screen as one you have used for downloading Support Packs or adding Support Packs to a Download Basket.

If you select the description (I have circled it in red in the screen shot), the browser will open another tab / window that has a hierarchical list of all Notes in the Support Pack.  Follow the instructions on this screen to download the list.

Note that if you wish to drill down the hierarchical list, you can do so by selecting the line containing the SAP Component code

Repeat the search (if necessary) and download steps for each Support Package you need to produce a list for.  Please let me know via the comments if this has helped you, if you have any questions about the process, or if you have any other topics you’d like me to write about.