T-code ST14 – all you ever wanted to know about your BW system

Today I ran into t-code ST14 which was very much of surprise to me. Actually the t-code provides all information about the BW system someone would ever be interested to know. Mostly all the information are from area of Data Volume Management (DVM) but they are very interesting I must emphasize. Normally one would need to dig into the system and use many reports, functions etc to collect all the information that the t-code provides. The t-code is called as Application Analysis tool.

The code itself is not only dedicated to BW systems. At introduction popup while t-code is started one can decide whether it shall be information about Basis, Security, CRM (if you run it on top of CRM system) and BW systems shown. In next I just focus on the BW option.

There are 4 main areas of the provided information:

·         Basis Information / Dataflow – info about many TOP 30 items like: Top 30 PSA analysis, ODS/DSO Objects (Active Data view), E or F -Fact or Dimension Tables, Aggregates, Master Data Tables, Other BW Tables, Other Tables, ODS/DSO Objects (Change Log view), ODS/DSO Objects (Total Size View), Cubes, Objects, InfoProviders with BWA index, HybridProviders (as of BW 7.30), Semantically Partitioned Objects (as of BW 7.3).

·         BW Evaluation / Customizing – info like follows: Total Size BW Objects, BW namespaces used in the system, Top 30 Cubes: result of SAP_INFOCUBE_DESIGNS, Top 30 Cubes: InfoCube Compression Rates, PSA: Age of Requests, PSA that contain REQU older than 4 months, Partitioning of E-fact tables, BW Archiving Objects, Upload from source systems (last 5 weeks), Overview InfoProviders, InfoProviders not loaded during last 4 months, InfoProviders with suspicious keywords in text, InfoProviders w/o suitable time characteristics

·         ABW Technical Processing Information – info about the tool itself, A – means application (analysis) for BW

·         HANA Tables – only in case the BW system is on HANA, info like Top 30 Tables within ROWSTORE

Additional areas of information:

·         Extended Checks

·         BW Planning

·         Standard Tables

·         BPC Analysis

·         HANA Feasibility Check

·         BPC Monitoring Statistics

In case you are curios how the data into the tool is gathered. Here’s an explanation. A background job can be scheduled within the code to collect all the information. The job has name e.g. BW APPLICATION ANALYSIS 0x (x in case it run in parallel). Depending on the BW system size runtime of the job may differ. Once you have a data all different types of analysis are possible as described above.

It is a great tool which saves a lot of time as all useful information can be found at one place.

Needless to say that t-code is part of “Service tools for Applications ST-A/PI” (see my other blog here). Also the functions behind the t-code can be leveraged by Solution Manager while the data from the t-code can be downloaded to the Sol Man and further reported and analyzed there.

More information:

Significance of ST14 SAP BW Performance improvement Tool

Uncommenting reports /SSA/* - Service tools for Applications ST-A/PI

There is a bunch of functionality delivered within Service tools for Applications ST-A/PI. In particular functions are related to following areas:

·         ST-A/PI "Service Tools for Applications Plug-In"

·         SAP GoingLive, SAP EarlyWatch, Service preparation, report RTCCTOOL

·         Application monitor, Logistics Monitor, tcode: ST14

·         Analyis&Service Tools Launchpad, tcode: ST13

·         ABAP Trace for EarlyWatch/GoingLive, tcode: ST12

These functions are delivered via ABAP reports within naming convention like: /SSA/*. The functions are available via tcode ST13 where particular Tool name (function name e.g. BW-TOOLS, BWATOOLS, BPSTOOLS, BIIPTOOLS, etc.) needs to be selected and then sub function related to what was selected can run. I wrote detailed post about BW related functions (BW-TOOLS) here.

What may happen in particular NetWeaver ABAP based systems is that that certain function is not available to be chosen in ST13. Simple the function is not there in the function list. Reason of why it is not there might be that it source ABAP code got commented out by some SAP Notes implementation. Uncommenting can be done under certain circumstances in following way.

In tcode ST13 run tool name called RTCCTOOL. Here choose Addon&Upgr button on the toolbar. On next popup run “Procedure after add-on implementation.”

What it does is checking SAP Notes implementation prerequisites of the commented coding and automatically does uncomment of the coding. The certain prerequisite is that relevant support package level in the ABAP system is high enough.

However, if there already was an SAP note for the affected coding implemented before the 'procedures after add-on implementation' were executed; the coding can no longer be automatically uncommented.

Other option is to use ABAP report /SSF/SAO_UTILS to uncomment. However it is the most likely the same report which is used by tool name RTCCTOOL as described above. So in case it didn’t work for you via RTCCTOOL this report won’t either.

However there is a 3^rd option. You may want to copy source of any commented out /SSA/* report. You can copy this to Z* namespace and try to uncomment it manually. The tool name/function won’t be visible in ST13 but you can run it manually in tcode SE38.

More information:

Suite of helpful BW programs – BW Tools (ST13->BW-TOOLS)

69455 – Service tools for Applications ST-A/PI (ST14, RTCCTOOL, ST12)

1384471 - RTCCTOOL message: "Report /SSA/*" cannot be uncommented