Data Dictionary Type inconsistency

Recently I faced strange situation related to ABAP data dictionary. While I was logged into the system suddenly I could not run any of standard transaction. Literally all stopped, nothing worked, just everything seemed to ending up in ABAP dumps everywhere. As I could not even change to run tcode ST22 I had no really choice to see what is going on. Only this was the message:

Finally I found out one tcode which worked. It was SM21 tcode and here what I saw in there:

11:53:11 DIA  007 000 SAPSYS                 AB  0 Run-time error "DDIC_TYPE_INCONSISTENCY" occurred

11:53:16 DIA  007 000 SAPSYS                 AB  1 > Short dump "141128 115311 myserve r_SID_00 " generated error DDIC_TYPE_INCONSISTENCY occured p1=abap-gen

While I searched for “DDIC_TYPE_INCONSISTENCY” issue only advices I got was ot check consistency of data dictionary by reports like RSNTABCONSISTENCY or RSDDCHECK. However I could not ran these as nether SE38 was accessible.

Luckily I had an access to OS system of that SAP instance. As I logged into the OS I realized that some transport was being imported. After contacting Basis support I revealed that there was a patch import in progress in that transport. However for some basis issue that patch was not intended to be imported to that system although it was technically possible. Not proper patch caused that data dictionary was falling apart. Basically an objects which were active before got overwritten by the transport but as they were not correct there could not be activated due to syntax related issues.

What can I tell you… basis team admitted their mistake and we ended up restoring the system from (luckily) 1 week old backup. One more lesson learned!