BW objects - Differences between DDIC and DB

BW system generates a lot of temporary database objects while it is running e.g. during query execution, or other processes that read data from BW infoproviders. These objects can be database views or tables. Mostly they are placed in '/BI0/0' namespace.

I wrote some information about the BW temporary objects here. In that blog post I mentioned that program SAP_DROP_TMPTABLES can be used to remove these type temporary objects. However if some of those temporary objects are reported as inconsistent via t-code DB02 there is another program that should be executed. It is program SAP_UPDATE_DBDIFF. The program makes a copy of an information about differences between definitions in ABAP DDIC and in database catalog to table DBDIFF. The DB02 t-code than includes the DBDIFF  table when checking for inconsistencies.

 

More information:

Deletion of temporary database BW objects

Possibilities of Process Chain monitoring

Monitoring of Process Chains (PC) is very important part of BW system administration. Basically only successful run of the PC guarantees that there is up to date data for BW reports. There are many different tools which can be used to monitor of the PC. In this blog post I will focus only on the tools that can be employed for automatic monitoring without manual interaction of administrator. In all cases described below an email with the status of the PC run is being sent out to dedicated user.

1. CCMS: tcode RSMON -> Monitors -> BI CCMS; The CCMS gives a list of the PC available in the system. If an distribution list together with message for process of the PC is created then the CCMS will sent an email as the PC’s alerts happens.

More information about whole setup can be found here.

2. tcode ALRTCATDEF – here an recipient list is created and together with alert settings for selected process chain failure is setup (in tcode RSPC -> menu Process Chain -> Attributes -> Alerting -> check an checkbox “Send Alerts if Error Occur”) then email notification is sent out. In this case the PC’s property needs to be changed for every PC to be monitored as settings's flag (alerting) needs to be checked.

More information about whole setup can be found here.

3. tcode RSPCM - simply particular PC needs to added and notification maintained. This case comes with less implementation effort. No chains will need to be transported.

More information about whole setup can be found here.

Further investigating of SAP BW dumps

There are different types of ABAP dump one may encounter while working with SAP BW. Many of them are quite tricky to read. Even skilled BW developer or ABAP developer can be surprised at the end what really an issue was about. I just name few examples that can be seen here or here. What is an issue is that actually there are many areas within the dump that need to properly reviewed in order to come to conclusion of what is going on. Basically what we use once we look at the dumps is that we just review it very briefly w/o detail look at some of areas.

What I found recently is that following areas of the dumps are worth to look at:

Chosen variables - area lists out variable values at the time of dump. In many cases there might be values which may lead us to solution or at least gives us a clue of what is going on. In example below there was a very generic dump: UNCAUGHT_EXCEPTION / CX_RSR_X_MESSAGE. Symptoms of the issue was that load to DSO was just failing w/o any obvious evidence of what is wrong. 

 Monitor of the data load request was just read, no log or anything else was present. Finally someone took at this this part of the dump and there was an IO mentioned = 0WEEKDAY1. While looking up the IO name in support.sap.com an SAP Note (2079842 - Time check: Termination _CHECK_PART_TIME_WO_FINEST-6-) with solution was found. Therefore always pay attention to this part of the ABAP dump!

BW 74: Monitoring of process chain for mobile devices

Transaction codes like RSPC1 or RSPCM are very commonly used by BW administrators. Their main purpose is very simply to monitor the process chains so basically to monitor the data loads. For overview of all RSPC* related t-codes see here.

Within BW 74 these t-codes get even better as there is new t-code available. It is RSPCM_WEB (this is available in BW 74 SP09+) which uses web environment instead of SAP GUI. The web application is based on SAPUI5 framework which provides unified look&feel for any devices. Data connection BW server is based on SAP Gateway technology. Therefore your BW 74 system must have installed SAP Gateway component (look for components SAP_GWFND = SAP Gateway Foundation in your system). If you have a Gateway installed on your BW system then follow up OData service configuration as per this guide. Basically you need to activate OData service (RSPCM_GW_SERVICE_SRV) in customizing: t-code SPRO -> SAP NetWeaver -> Gateway -> OData Channel -> Administration -> General Settings -> Activating and Managing Services. Then follow with activate of the the SAPUI5 application in t-code SICF -> service Name: RSPCM*

Once it is you have it all configured you can run the app via calling following URL:

http(s)://:/rspcm_web

or by just kicking it off from SAP GUI via t-code: RSPCM_WEB

Common issues with this functionality are that while attempt to run tcode RSPCM_WEB following error message is raised:

Transaction error with 403 Forbidden

Followed by message:

No Process chains found

Usually this is caused either by fact that corresponding service to UI5 service is not active. In this case you need to activate following service in t-code SICF /sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/rspcm_web. Other case might be that there is no process chains entered in t-code RSPCM. 

More information:

2113675 - RSPCM_WEB transaction error with 403 Forbidden

BW related users

There is couple of users needed for communication between SAP BW system and its source SAP systems. These users comes usually in pair: one of them is dialog user for administration guy for doing analysis and troubleshooting and other one is background one used while systems are communicating each other. The paired users are needed in both sides in BW and in e.g. SAP ECC as well. Below I will shortly describe what authorization and other things are needed in order to set up those users.

BW system:

Example of user	profile
BWADMIN	S_RS_ALL - Business Information Warehouse: All Authorizations
BWREMOTE	S_BI-WHM_RFC - Business Information Warehouse, RFC user in the Warehouse

ECC system:

Example of user	profile
BWADMIN	SAP_ALL - All SAP System authorizations And/Or SAP_NEW - New authorization checks
ALEREMOTE	S_BI-WX_RFC - Business Information Warehouse, RFC-User Extraction

More information on this topic:

150315 - BW-Authorizations for Remote-User in BW and OLTP

Report RSOS_CHECK_REPAIR Check and Repair of BW Search Settings

Basically what the report RSOS_CHECK_REPAIR does is check of TREX Searches for BW Repository Objects. Technically it is searching following tables and tries to find:

RSOSCHNOBJQUEUE - Queue for changed Objects (Search), records which do have no change done to search attributes

RSOTLOGOSEARATR - Searchable attributes for Object Types, records which do have attribute of a TLOG Object for Advanced Search equal to space

Subsequently entries that are found in those two above mentioned tables are looked up in table RSOBJS_OBJ_TYPES. That’s the table which holds object types of BW objects like infoproviders (infoobjects, multiproviders, cubes, DSOs, etc), BEx elements (queries, workbooks, web items, etc), infopackages/DTPs, etc. basically all the BW objects.

If there are some BW’s search objects that are not search-relevant but they have entries in those two tables means those should be removed. You can do this clean up by running same ABAP report with Repair flag enabled.

Deletion of temporary database BW objects

It might happen that because of upgrade of BW system, maintenance activities, inconsistencies etc. you need to reorganize temporary BW objects. These kinds of objects are starting with following name convention: 

/BI0/0X*

Where X means different temporary object given by specifics circumstances which occurred when the object was created. E.g. /BI0/06* are tables used during BEx query processing. Refer to SAP Note 449891 for more object types.

If you face situation that you are running out temporary objects you can delete temporary object. You can use report SAP_DROP_TMPTABLES to reorganize them. Report deletes them pretty straight forward with checking either they are used at the runtime of report. Therefore it is advisable to run this report as a part of maintenance activities in defined time frame when no regular activities are happening in the BW system. Make sure no user is running queries, no data load is happening, no compression is in place etc.

Notice that report’s runtime is depended on how big your system is. In general if you going to run it for first time it might be that it will run for several hours.

Furthermore you can use function module RSDDTMPTAB_CLEANUP (while specifying input parameter I_NAMETYPE = 03) for the same as well.

See other SAP notes on topic of Temporary database objects in BW:

1139396 - Temporary database objects in BW 7.X

449891 - Temporary database objects in BW 3.x

659946 - FAQ: Temporary tablespaces

More information:

BW objects - Differences between DDIC and DB

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.

TAs RSPC*

Process chain functionality of SAP BI is very important from application maintenance point if view. It does automate data loading furthermore it visualizes, controls and monitor loads. Within SAP BI SAP NetWeaver 7.0 (former NW 2004s) there is a set of RSPC* transactions dedicated to process chains as follows:

 

RSPC Process Chain Maintenance, basic transaction

RSPC1 Process Chain Display, Displaying one PChain only

 

RSPC1_NOLOG Process Chain Maintenance, Log displaying of one PChain only

RSPC2 Process Chain via Process, Displays process types available for PChains

 

RSPCM Monitor daily process chains

RSPCP Process Log, Display of log for a process

 

RSPC_RESTART        Restart Process Chain Run

Where’s my activation icon?

In BW’s Administration Workbench transaction RSA1 under modeling area in source system section there was a nice icon available indicating that your particular source system is activated.

This feature started to be available as far as I remember at least in BW version 3.10.

Yes I’m speaking correctly “it was available” because since BI 7.0 SP 13 and higher this icon is disappeared from RSA1. I’m wandering what was reason of this icon removal. I’m not able to find any SAP note to explain this :(

Deletion of data row from PSA

Is it possible to delete whole single or multiple rows from PSA storage? This was an issue I faced recently and since I was too lazy to get back to my source system to adjust data there I simply wanted to delete some records which were erroneous in PSA and then re-uploaded PSA request furthermore to InfoProvider above PSA. My intention was simple; to go to PSA screen of RSA1; find my PSA request; choose “Edit data” from right-context menu on request and delete records on maintenance screen. Then I wonder why there is no Delete item in the menu of this screen enabled. I probably guess that I have forgotten to delete data request from InfoProvider above PSA but I haven’t. Request was deleted from InfoProvider. They I tried to do the same with additional authorization. I got SAP super user with SAP_ALL and SAP_NEW authorization. And you guess it right: it still didn’t work for me: Delete item in menu was disabled. OK; I was thinking; it is the highest time to search for some SAP note on service.sap.com/notes. Another bad news for me was that I wasn’t successful while searching for notes. The only official information I got was an online help at this page saying: “If you change the number of records for a request in the PSA, meaning adding or deleting records, a correct record count in the BW monitor is no longer guaranteed when posting or processing a request.Therefore, we recommend not changing the number of records for a request in the PSA.” This was my guideline. I finally realized that this is possible. I went through PSA-API in order to create custom ABAP program to delete the lines in PSA I wanted. Soon I comprehended that I have no time to play with PSA-API function modules so I made quick and dirty solution and I got rid of unwanted records in PSA in transaction SE11 while I debugged it and deleted it by changing of sy-subrc value.

Conclusion is: You can change records in the PSA or you can delete complete data from PSA but not single record even changing is only allowed if the request is not posted yet to InfoProvider above.