Scheduling Process Chains via copying its jobs

In my other blog post I mentioned how to schedule Process Chains with restrictions. This basically covers scenarios that things like SAP Factory calendar is used to base the scheduling on. Also this is about scenarios when the job shall not be executed on e.g. weekends-workdays etc.

Similarly there might be requirements on how to schedule the PC several times a day but there is no periodicity of these runs. Had it been the case periodicity is there than just a settings within job’s Start Time dialog box (like every minute/hour/day/…) can be leveraged -> see mu screenshot in here. These settings can be found under Periodic Values button in that pop-up window.

However as the periodicity is not given what can be done to schedule the job? Actually there is a possibility to just schedule one job for any given specific time and once there is a job scheduled via copying the job we replicate other schedules for the same PC for different start times that we need to have the PC running. This can be achieved via t-code SM37. There in its menu called Job there is an item Repeat scheduling available.

Once the job is copied just a start condition needs to be changed in the SM37 and that it!

How to check what is your SAP system type?

SAP system type is an function of the system in the SAP system group from the point of view of the Transport Organizer.

What is the SAP system type or sometimes referred as SAP system class can be revealed from parameters of SAP system. These parameters itself are normally set via system profile parameters function (t-codes RZ10 / RZ11).

1. transport/systemtype defines if the system belongs from a transport point-of-view to the world of SAP development systems (param value = SAP) or if it is a customer system (value = "CUSTOMER" and it is default value). The parameter is set during installation of the system. The parameter affects the transport behavior of the system (e.g. range of transport request numbers) on the correction system (working in the SAP namespace SSCR, etc.), and on upgrade behavior (keyword modifications).

2. auth/sap_test_system parameter indicates that the SAP system is special test system.  If so value of the param is set to ON.

3. auth/fa_test_system parameter indicates that the SAP system is type of test system marked as final assembly system. If so value is set to ON.

If any of these parameters are present in the SAP system it means that the system is based on ABAP Stack.

As alternative to t-codes RZ10 / RZ11 function module TR_SYS_PARAMS can be used to check of what is value of transport/systemtype among other technical information like System Change Option, SID, Change Option for Client-Dependent Customizing Objects, Change Option for Repository Objects in Logon Client, Client Role, Recording Client for Switch BC Sets.

What is TLOGO in SAP BW terms?

I mentioned the TLOGO term in my previous post. I just add short explanation of what it means. The TLOGO just represents different BW object types. TLOGO most likely refers to Transportable Object Type. To dig deeper to that, there are always two logical transport objects that represents the BW objects. There are the objects:

·        customer

·        delivery TLOGO object

The BW writes the TLOGO object as per the system settings to the transport request when transporting the particular object.

For more details see domain RSTLOGO in data dictionary.

The different TLOGOs can be also spotted in t-code RSA1 in Metadata Repository.

As of version BW 74 there are following different BW object types present:

CTRT   Currency Translation Type

UOMT  Quantity Conversion Type

AREA   InfoArea

APCO  Application

ROUT  Routine

RSFO  BW Formula

IOBJ    InfoObject

IOBC   InfoObject Catalog

ODSO  DataStore Object (classic)

ADSO  DataStore Object (advanced)

CUBE   InfoCube

AGGR  Aggregate

HYBR   HybridProvider

LPOA   Semantically Partitioned Object

ISET    InfoSet

COPR  Local CompositeProvider

ODPE  Operational Data Provider (ESH-Based)

FBPA   Open ODS View

MPRO  MultiProvider

HCPR   CompositeProvider

ALVL   Aggregation Level

DAPA  Data Archiving Process

ISTD   3.x InfoSource

ISCS   Communication Structure

TRCS   InfoSource

UPDR  Update Rules

LSYS   Source System

ISFS   3.x DataSource

RSDS  DataSource

INSP   Inspection Plan

ISMP   Transfer Rules

ISTS   Transfer Structure

DEST   Open Hub Destination

ELEM   Query Element

HAAP   SAP HANA Analysis Process

TRFN   Transformation

ISIP    InfoPackage

ISIG    InfoPackage Group

RASE   Reporting Agent Setting

RAPA   Reporting Agent Scheduling Package

RRCA  RRI InfoCube Receiver

RRQA  RRI Query Receiver

XLWB  Workbook

SPOK  InfoSpoke

EVEN   Event Processing Chain

DDAS  Data Access Service

RSPT   Process Chain Starter

RSPI   Interrupt Process

WWPA Web Design Time Parameter Metadata

WWIB  Web Design Time Item Metadata

QVIW  Query View

EREL   Enterprise Report: Reusable Element

ERPT   Enterprise Report

ITEM   Web Item (Format SAP BW 3.x)

BITM   BEx Web Item

TMPL   Web Template (Format SAP BW 3.x)

BTMP  BEx Web Template

KPDF   KPI Definition

KPCE   KPI Catalog Entry

BRSE   Broadcast Setting

ANMO  Mining Model

ANSO  Model Source

DMMO Data Model (currently not used)

ANPR  Analysis Process

ACGR  Role

CRWB  Crystal Report

AQBG  InfoSet Query User Group

AQSG  InfoSet

AQQU  InfoSet Query

DTPA   Data Transfer Process

PLST   Planning Function Type

PLSE   Planning Function

PLSQ   Planning Sequence

THEM  Theme

PLCR   Characteristic Relationships

THJT   Key Date of Type Derivation

DMOD Data Flow

RSPV   Process Variants

RSPC   Process Chain

PLDS   Data Slices

ENHO  Enhancement/Append

ASOB  Analytics Security Object (BI Analysis Authorization)

RRUL   Remodeling Rule

RDAC  Configuration for Real-Time Data Acqusition

APPS   Appplication Set (BPC - Transport)

BIXP   Conversion Object

XCLS   Xcelsius Dashboard

AAOE  Analysis Office Excel Workbook

AAOP  Analysis Office PowerPoint

TRPR   Operational Data Provider

AZAP   Analysis Application

ENVM  BPC Unified Environment

MODL  BPC Model

TEAM  BPC Team

WKSP  BPC Workspace

BBPF   BPC BPF

BDAP  BPC Data Access Profile

AZEX   Design Studio Extension

AINX   Local Provider

AABC  AVA Global Setting

AADT  AVA Global Setting

AAPP   Model

AAPS   Environment

ABPC   Business Unit

ABPF   BPF

ABRU  Business Rule

ACGA  Configuration

ACGP  Configuration

ACGS  BPC System Configuration

ACLB   Library

ACTR   Control

ADAF  Data Access Profile

ADEE   BPC Deletion Enttiy

ADEI   Deletion Item

ADEL   BPC Deletion

ADIM   Dimension

ADMC  Data Manager Data File

ADMD  Data Manager File Folder

ADMF  Data Manager File

ADML  Data Manager Package Link

ADMP  Data Manager Package

ADTG  Drill Through

AFLD   File Folder

AFLE   Files

AFLG   Business Unit

AFLC   Category

AJUT   Journal Template

AKPI   AVA KPI Setting

AMBR  Dimension member

AMPF  ToBeDeleted

ARTP   Templates

ASPD  Script Folder

ASPF   Script File

ASPR   Script Logic

ATEM  Team

ATPF   Task Profile

AWSS  Workstatus

Different versions and statuses of BW objects

While working with BW objects one may encounter with different versions and statuses they may have.

Version of BW object (domain OBJVERS) is used to differentiate last active version and the modified version. E.g. if some settings within the BW object has changed from X to Z then before the object is activated then value of X is presented within record having OBJVERS 'A' and the value of Z will be in the 'M' record of the BW object. Once the object is activated then Z will be present in 'A' version.

To track changes within the BW object following customizing can be enabled: SPRO –>SAP Reference IMG –>SAP Net Weaver –>Business Warehouse –>General Settings –> Create Historical TLOGO Versions Automatically. Enabling this; the system may store historical versions of the specific BW object type (so called TLOGO – domain RSTLOGO) in case whether is created before the object of the relevant type is exported, imported or activated. The historical version enables you to monitor changes made to an object over time. Historical version can be generated in event of:

- Automatic version creation of export

- Automatic version creation after import

- Automatic version creation before activation

 

Objects versions of rest of BW objects (e.g. cubes, variables, etc) as defined in domain RSOBJVERS:

A        Active

M        Revised

N        New

D        Content

H        Historic

T        Transport

R        Retrofit (for some object types like BW transformations)

 

Object version for BI Metadata Search as domain RSOSOBJVERS:

A        Active

D        Content

 

Object versions of query elements - Usually query elements might be presented in the database tables in several objects versions:

A - Active version used by the BEx Query Designer and OLAP

B - Backup version represents 3.x definition in 7.x system

D - Delivery version. The objects created and delivered as SAP Business Content

M - Modifiable version. Used in transport. Query elements are imported into a target system in 'M' object version.

S - A backup object version created by the report SAP_GLOBV_CHECK.

 

Status of BW object describes whether the object is currently active or not. If it is active the value in is set to 'ACT', otherwise it will be 'INA'. The same value will be present in the 'A' and 'M' records for this field.

Object Status of BW object (DTP, LPO, TRFN, OpenHub, etc.) as per domain RSOBJSTAT:

ACT    Active, executable

INA     Inactive, not executable

OFF     Switched off

PRO    Productive

 

More information:

SDN wiki on Query Elements

DLG_VARIABLE error while running BEx report in SAP Portal

While running BEx BE report in SAP portal environment I came across below error:

          Error in rendering root for dialog “DLG_VARIABLE”

The report runs fine while running it outside the portal in BEx Analyzer, Analysis for MS Office or via t-code RSRT. There are below SAP Notes available that fix this issue. However these SAP Notes are only relevant for SAP BW 7.5 SP06 version.

2465736 - Error: Error in rendering root for dialog “DLG_VARIABLE”

2357717 - Cannot convert field VALUE_NUMBER of type DECF34 to double

As in my case BW version was 7.4 so the Notes are not applicable. Root cause within one of BEx variables type of user exit used in the query which populated wrong value. 

How to prepare for start /stop of SAP BW system

A quiet while ago I posted blog about BW specific report RS_SYSTEM_SHUTDOWN to be used to shut down and start up BW processes. Actually I think SAP Basis people will agree that a topic of starting/stopping of BW system is bit more complex.

For restarting of the BW system SAP recommends to perform so called soft shutdown (sometimes called graceful shutdown). This means that while shutdown is triggered it waits for transactions to be completed instead just hard shutdown. The some waiting times can be configured via profile parameters to assign them specific time out. See more about these parameters here.

Here are points to consider from the BW system perspective while the soft shutdown is going on.

- Process chain related processes/jobs

- Real time data acquisition daemons (RDS) jobs

In case of PCs I there are these active it just continue to run during the wait time that was given in report RS_SYSTEM_SHUTDOWN on its selection screen. No new background processes (like process chains) are started by scheduler. If there are some of the PCs waiting for execution they will be executed after the restart.

In case of RDS jobs during the soft shutdown are terminated but without stopping the daemons or closing open requests. Successor jobs for the RDS are scheduled using immediate start.

There are also other tools that can be used in case soft shutdown is not an option. For (let's call it) “hard” shutdown there is an ABAP report BTCTRNS1 (no new jobs are started during the shutdown) for “hard” restart report BTCTRNS2 (jobs are scheduled back after the restart and are started as well.

More information:

Online docu: SAP BW Basic Administration Task

De-scheduling of BEx Broadcast

I recently needed to de-schedule one BEx broadcast I just realized that I forgot how to do it :-) Thus I’m writing this short blog post for my and perhaps others future reference.

As mostly all the settings of BEx broadcaster are done in web environment of JAVA stack -obviously also scheduling / de-schedule happens there. To start it one may go to t-code RSRD_ADMIN - Broadcasting Administration -> Settings and search here for particular broadcast you want to maintain. Once it is found just hit EDIT button and that action will start web environment of broadcaster.

Here there is a hyper link called “Overview of Scheduled Settings” available:

There one needs to specify again the same settings as in the t-code. Once it is found here and displayed there is a button called “Delete Selected Schedules” available and there you go..

For more information about many other features of the BEx broadcaster environment refer to: How to Edit or Delete a Scheduled BW Report

Other post on the BEx broadcaster:

How to change broadcast setting’s owner?

Delete data load requests from Open Hub

Loads to Open Hubs (OH) are pretty much automated. This is meant in a way that there is normally not needed any manual user interaction. However in case load has failed and it needs to be deleted there are not many options left.

One of the options is to just see DTP associated with the OH. There is icon on tollbar called on "Last Request". This gets to data load request maintenance screen. By manipulating the request status via "Where-used List" button we can influence the load e.g. to delete it via setting it to failed status - red.

Another option is to run FM RSB_API_OHS_REQUEST_SETSTATUS. This FM set the status of the OH in load monitor. As input parameters an request ID, desired status (R   = Red; G = Green; N = New; O = Data Request) and finally message – text that will be shown in monitor. All 3 params are mandatory. Once the FM runs the OH request is set to the desired request status.

Hierarchy data export - job terminated in source system error

I encounter below issue while exporting hierarchy data from InfoObject to other systems. I had enabled my IO with settings “Characteristics is Export DS” available on Master Data/Texts tab of the IO maintenance screen. This means that characteristic is used as export data source. So its attributes, texts, and hierarchies of the IO can be extracted into other BW systems via Data Mart Interface.

Afterwards I created export DS via doing right click on the IO and choosing menu Additional Functions -> Create Export DataSource. Notice that the export DS for hierarchy are still working in 3.x version fashion. Also the version of such a DS is always only modified and the DS is self is Emulated. Same settings you can observe in t-code RSDS.

I replicated DS in my target system. Once I tried to load the data via InfoPackage there was a following error:

Job terminated in source system -> Request set to red.

There was an ABAP dump associated with the cancelled job. It was saying about termination in ABAP report SAPLRSSG, runtime error was type of SYNTAX_ERROR and error description was like follows:

The current ABAP program "SAPLRSSG" had to be terminated because it has come across a statement that unfortunately cannot be executed.

In include "GP00733D5CMRY7YE3D93SUE852V", in line 34 of program

 "GP00733D5CMRY7YE3D93SUE852", the following syntax errors have occurred:

Field "/BIC/C5DU8_IOname is unknown. It is neither in one of the specified tables nor defined by a "DATA" statement.

It was obvious that data element as described wasn’t present in the system and it even wasn’t supposed to be in there.

Actually issue was within method for loading of data. This information for particular DS is stored in table ROOSGEN - Generated Objects for OLTP Source. In my case it was set to T that means transactional RFC but once I corrected it into I (Idoc) my upload worked.

There are few forum posts about this issue in SDN like here and here but solution is not provided within the posts. I hope this blog will be useful for people who face same issue.

Handling KF behavior in Expert Routine in case of DSO as target

I came across following issue while dealing with expert routine. There was a DSO object as target of TRFN.  Key figures within the TRFN were updated but they weren’t aggregated. Basically values of KFs from last row that was processed were updated into the DSO but not values form previously processed records. So at the end the KFs were not summed up – no aggregation took place and what was going on was that there was just a move operation executed.

After checking with SAP documentation I realized that that this behavior is as designed:

“If the target of the transformation is a DataStore object, key figures are updated by default with the aggregation behavior Overwrite (MOVE).”

If one wouldn’t need this behavior then it must be overcome in custom coding within the expert routine. Data in result package must be collected instead just appended. Below is example of how to do it.

TYPE: t_ty_t_TG_1 TYPE SORTED TABLE OF _ty_s_TG_1 WITH NON-UNIQUE DEFAULT KEY.

DATA: ls_record_no TYPE rsarecord VALUE 0,

lt_result_pack TYPE t_ty_t_TG_1,

ls_result_str TYPE _ty_s_TG_1.

.

.

.

COLLECT ls_result_str INTO lt_result_pack.

Process chains having BPC processes executed only synchronously

In case of Process Chain that contains BPC related processes by default it doesn’t run a synchronously. Means if there are any parallel flows in the PC they just run one by one. Next one just starts when previous one is finished. This may look strange on first time as one would expect that parallel flow simply runs in parallel (asynchronously). But it has an explanation. As per below SAP Notes if PC triggered by BPC process chain '/CPMB/TRIGGER_BW_CHAIN' then no message is not sent out and whole PC is executed in synchronous mode.

The BPC processes that can be involved in such a PC can be anything that is dealing with objects using namespace '/CPMB/’.

To fix this and be able to run also the PCs with the BPC processes asynchronously below 1^st Note must be implemented and parameter called 'TRIGGER_BW_CHAIN_ASYNC' must be set to X in BPC customizing.

More information:

2151670 - Process chain does not send out a message if it is triggered by '/CPMB/TRIGGER_BW_CHAIN'

1938961 - Consulting: Process chain does not send out a message if executed synchronously

t-code RS09 Transport Browser for BI (BW) Objects

With the regards to BW transports situation is not very easy for BW developers. Once you add objects that were edited or newly created into the transport it is not very easy to find out what objects are really in the transport. This is caused by fact that normally BW objects (e.g. query elements, TRFNs, DTPs, Ipacks, etc.) are represented in the transport by it technical ID which is not always possible to be read by humans.

Some of the BW developers came up with custom tool that basically associates BW technical ID with their descriptions to enable easier navigation with the transports.

However as of BW version 7.x there is a new SAP standard t-code that support BW transports. It is RS09 - Transport Browser for BI Objects. Corresponding program is called RSAWBN_REQ_TEST_TB and that one calls FM RSAWBN_REQ_SHOW_TB which handles all logic in the t-code. Nice thig about the t-code is that you can not only easily get to know what the objects in the transport are but also navigate to particular part of RSA1 t-code and start editing the object. This is possible via “Change” button.

What is strange to me is that SAP doesn’t really mention this t-code in the documentation. There are no mentions of the t-code what so ever in the help.sap.com neither at support.sap.com. Also the ABAP name of the t-code has a TEST in its name. Similarly development package where the ABAP program is located is marked as depreciated. So perhaps this was some SAP internal development that was never supposed to be included into final versions of BW? Who knows?

Possibilities of DataSource replication

Replication of DataSources is quite painful in BW systems. It usually takes time and there is high effort that needs to be put into it. Normally it is done in tcode RSA1 -> Modeling -> Source Systems -> right click on particular systems and choose Replicate DataSources. This brings up below dialog box where parameters for replication can be set up.

By starting this up it activates all DataSource available in respective source system. SAP delivered improvement to this functionality via below SAP Note that supports replication of specific DataSouce within a source system or an application component.

Despite there are some drawbacks like it replicates all DataSources in 7.x fashion it speeds up whole replication process.

In order to be used this enhancement you need to setup a parameter called REPL_DATASOURCE_UI_740 = X in table RSADMIN. Feature is available as of BW 7.3 SP11 and BW 7.4 SP05.

More information:

1885443 - Replication of Datasources

Export DataSource creation and replication

Hierarchy activation syntax error

Recently I faced an error with regards to activate hierarchy related datasource. While trying to do that there was an error:

Syntax error in GP_ERR_RSAPTH3, row 30 (-> long text)

Issue is within data inconsistency for specific hierarchy in table ROOHIECAT. Luckily there are SAP Notes that can solve this issue. After implementing ABAP report ZROOHIECAT_REPAIR and running it for particular hierarchy issue is solved.

To get the ABAP report look for following SAP Notes:

484370 - Syntax error during activation of BW730 HIER data sources

2113639 - Activation of Hierarchy DataSource - GP_ERR_RSAPTH3