Dr. ABAP

I have found few interesting SAP notes  where a phrase “Dr. ABAP” is appearing in sections like “Additional key words” like in note 212462 or it is mentioned in comments on ABAP code correction attached to notes. I was wondering what this mysterious term of Dr. ABAP could imagine. Based on research I did on internet it seems that this was a kind of nickname of Mr. Axel Kurka former SAP guy who greatly contributed to development of ABAP engine, NetWeaver Application Server and lot of others SAP’s technologies. Axel is considered as one of ABAP fathers. His nickname was present in his articles published in “SAP Technical Journal” magazine (currently being published under name SAP Professional Journal).

Acknowledges of Axel’s work has been published in several SAP resources, e.g. by Mr. Andreas Blumenthal and Horst Keller in their article; on site Alte-SAP.de. Let me join them. Thank you Axel, RIP.

BI book review I

I have done reading of Gary Nolan’s book: Efficient SAP NetWeaver BI Implementation and Project Management.  First of all this is my first non technical BI book. As I’m used to read mostly technology books, SAP notes, technical white papers, SDN forums, etc. That’s why this book was quite unique. Not so many technical issue discussed in detail - just to notification of them and few tips how to solved them and even avoid them.

As first BI project is introduced in all of its flavors and regardless of BI product release. It is clearly stated here what BW is and what is not, what to expect out of it, what makes project successful etc. Basically a term of “what it takes a BI project” and all kinds of BI projects are discussed here from all of its phases (project planning -> gathering and analyzing requirements -> development/build/testing -> preparing GoLive -> after GoLive). Author is utilizing his broad experience and describing all potential issues within project. From this point of view book is very useful.

Other helpful staff in book is examples of BI project deliverables like: standards documents, project plans, naming conventions, check lists, test scripts, etc.

For more details see book homepage at SAP Press or at Galileo Press.

Service Marketplace server’s connection

Having troubles while browsing service market place (also known as OSS)? Same with me; I usually start with http://service.sap.com; I log in via S-User ID and this redirects me to one of application servers which have hostnames like websmpXXX.sap-ag.de. Then sometimes some links are not working from this server – as server seems to be broken. This seems to be often caused by overloaded particular server websmpXXX. Server farm of OSS is suppose to be working with load balancing concept but this problem on some conditions still persists. Therefore it can be very quickly solved by switching to other server directly in URL path in your browser.

E.g. introduction page of OSS can be switched from websmp209 to websmp203.

Here’s list of few websmpXXX which are working:

websmp105.sap-ag.de

websmp103.sap-ag.de

websmp108.sap-ag.de

websmp109.sap-ag.de

websmp130.sap-ag.de

websmp201.sap-ag.de

websmp202.sap-ag.de

websmp230.sap-ag.de

F1 2008 championship winner

A winner of 2008 series of Formula 1 championship is known! It is Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton. As SAP is a technology partner of the team it is SAP success as well. Company is joining congratulation to Lewis on their official pages. He won series of 2008 championship on 2^nd of November 2008 at Interlagos Circuit, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Actually he did not win this match but he scored the best in overall tournament results.

SAP is a long term sponsor of F1; currently supporting Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One Racing Team. SAP is software provider for the team. You can learn more about their partnership at McLaren pages here and SAP’s pages here.

Drag and Drop activation in RSA1

Functionality of Drag and Drop is very highly used within TA RSA1 – Administration Workbench of SAP BW. By this functionality you moving BW object via different InfoAreas, adding InfoObjects to InfoProviders, activating BW objects from Business Content etc. However this feature can be switched off and you getting information message saying:

Drag  Drop is switched off - switch on in RSADMIN/RSADMINSV

Message no. RSM1132

To enable it you need to maintain table RSADMINSV via e.g. TA SM30 and check out “Drag&Drop off” field.