Extending NW Developer Editions (aka miniSAP) license

There are few resources discussing this topic that can be found out there on the internet. However every time I do the license extension I suffer a bit with it. Thus I providing this blog post to remind me how to do it for good 😃

First how to find out when the license of NetWeaver (NW) Developer Editions (aka miniSAP) will expire. Normally when you log into your system you get a below copyright popup which apart of other information (like last system logon date/time) reminds when the license will expire.

 

Another option is to see the same information from menu System -> Status -> under SAP System Data area:

  

Third option to see when the license will expire is t-code SLICENSE itself.

 

In case you haven’t logged into your NW developer edition for some time and you can’t remember the passwords or something like that so you are not able to see either copyright popup that comes after logon or you can’t login to your system at all as you getting the logon error like below just do the following. 

Use user SAP* and login to 001 client with password Down1oad. Nee to mention that password of the user SAP* depends on your particular version of the NW developer edition. Therefore the password I mentioned here may not be valid for all the NW developer edition that exit.

Now with regards how to extend the license. While you are in t-code SLICENSE notice the field Active Hardware Key. Open page https://go.support.sap.com/minisap select corresponding radio button System e.g. in case of  SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.52 SP 4 it is an entry “NPL - SAP NetWeaver 7.x (Sybase ASE)”. Fill up rest of the fields like Salutation, First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Hardware Key – that you can find in the t-code SLICENSE. Afterward just accept the license agreement and hit Generate button. Your web browser will prompt you to save NPL.txt file that contains the license.

Now you need to import the generated NPL.txt file into your NW developer edition system via the t-code SLICENSE. There is in INSTALL button available which will prompt you to browse for the NPL.txt file you just downloaded.

 

One of the issues one may run into I that there will be an error while installing the license file like below “Error when installing permanent license key”:

To fix this first an existing expired license needs to be removed in the t-code SLICENSE. Via menu entry Edit -> Delete License. Afterward import of the license file will be successful. 

Once all finished you can login with regular user like BWDEVELOPER and the extended license will be reflected on the copyright popup...

BPC error: system tried to insert a data record, even though a data record with the same primary key already exists

While maintaining dimension data in BPC via web BPC Administration Client there can be following message popping up:

The system tried to insert a data record, even though a data record with the same primary key already exists.

There can be many different reasons for this issue. Most likely, there is already a record with same name. E.g., one record is put in lower case whereas second one is in capitals. It is tricky to reveal what is an issue as from the BPC Administration Client the problematic record is normally not shown.

Issue can be solved using ABAP program UJA_REFRESH_DIM_CACHE. To use it just specify environment ID and dimension in which problem occurred.

More information:

2523994 - BPC NW 10.1:Error when processing dimension

2867588 - Error "The system tried to insert a data record, even though a data record with the same primary key already exists" when processing dimension in BPC Web Admin

Transporting display component of process chains

I recently faced an issue while trying to figure out how to move folder of process chain from one BW system to another. The folders where the process chains are stored in are so called Display Components. There is a dedicated object within the transport objects dedicated to the display components. It is called RSDC = Display Components Tree (means TLOGO object).

There is not much information about how to transport the display components available on internet nor on SAP support site. One of questions on SDN indicates how to setup the transport request mentions following:

However seeing value like RSPC as the object to be transported made me suspicious that all currently available will be moved to target from source to target system. However, that was not the case.

What needs to be done is to put the process chain that is located with the display component that has to be moved. In such a situation, the process chain will be moved to the target system along with the display component.

Technically the display component are located in table RSCOMPTLOGO.

Writing data into cube in delta mode

If there is a need to write data from ABAP code (e.g. from some UI technology like WebDynpro) there are a function modules like RSDRI_CUBE_WRITE_PACKAGE and RSDRI_CUBE_WRITE_PACKAGE_RFC to support that. The FMs are writing so called planning requests “Request w/o InfoPackage (APO Request)” means that particular cube needs to be set to transactional (real time) status.

It is not very well known fact that these function modules support also writing data in delta mode. By specifying input parameter called I_DELTA (to TRUE value), the system first calculates delta as difference between the data that is already present in the cube and data that is to be written into the cube. All characteristic tuples are evaluated of data set.

There are two prerequisites that must be fulfilled by the cube while using the delta function:

1. It works for cubes that contain cumulative key figures only and the cube is not a non-cumulative cube.

2. The delta feature must be permitted explicitly in the cube. It can be set on in the t-code in RSDCUBE. The flag “Delta Load Allowed with RSDRI” is stored in table RSDCUBE-DELTA_LOAD.

DTP reads different data than LISTCUBE

I came across a situation when DTP I created was pulling different data set comparing to t-code LISTCUBE. I wanted to validate data that the DTP was pulling as source for my custom ABAP login in BW transformation. To do this I opened t-code LISTCUBE and entered a same selection as my DTP’s filter was using. To my surprise, I got different data sets in the DTP and in the LISTCUBE. I started to debug the load and found out even more odd thing. In one of master data characteristics used in the source of the DTP, the data was not populated in none of the records pulled by the DTP. Whereas in the LISTCUBE the same characteristics the data was populated.

First thing that I tried was to run some tests for the affected characteristics in t-code RSRV. In particular, it was test called “Compare size of P tables/Q tables with X tables/Y tables” which can be found under All Elementary Tests -> Master Data. Error that was detected by this test was following:

15:00:06 o'clock on 17.03.2020: Start test run for user XXX

Compare sizes of P or Q and X or Y tables for characteristic RZZZ

Characteristic RZZZ: Consistency check between P and X, Q and Y tables

Characteristic RZZZ: Tables /BIC/PRZZZ, /BIC/XRZZZ are not consistent: 50.004 deviation(s)

15:00:06 on 17.03.2020: Test run for user XXX completed

From the error, it was obvious that I have inconsistencies between P (Master Data Table) and X (Attribute SID Table) table of master data characteristics (RZZZ). In fact, in the P table, there were records but there were no records in X table of the characteristics. I tried to use “Correct Error” function available in the RSTV t-code however; it was not possible to repair the error.  

Second thing I tired was ABAP program RSDMD_CHECKPRG_ALL. There are couple of tests available in this program. Most of them are available as well in the RSRV. As this program has also REPAIR function, I tried to apply it. 

However, I was again unsuccessful with it. The program when it ran on foreground dumped and while running on background there was following error:   

Message text                                                                                            

Error in BW:

Characteristic RZZZ: Checking all SID values in the X and Y table

Characteristic RZZZ: Checking table /BIC/XRZZZ

Characteristic RZZZ: Checking consistency between tables /BIC/XRZZZ and /BIC/PRZZZ

Characteristic RZZZ: Errors found during this test

Characteristic RZZZ: 1.403.304 values from table /BIC/PRZZZ do not exist in table /BIC/XRZZZ

Characteristic RZZZ: Following data records have errors (max 50 displayed):

             Characteristic RZZZ: Checking SID values for characteristic/attribute RZZZ

Question remained. How to fill X table - attribute SID table of the IO? In the t-code RSD1 – Characteristics maintenance there is one option. It is available via menu Extras ->Database Table -> Fill Attribute SID Table. While running this the X table was populated and tests in the RSRV or in the RSDMD_CHECKPRG_ALL report were positive w/o any issues. The functionality “Fill Attribute SID Table” available in RSD1 is also available via FM RSDRX_FILL_INITIAL_XYTABLE. Once all corrected my DTP was puling same data set as the LISTCUBE and data values in specific characteristics were not missing any more in the load.

20:35:34 o'clock on 17.03.2020: Start test run for user XXX

Compare sizes of P or Q and X or Y tables for characteristic RZZZ

Characteristic RZZZ: Consistency check between P and X, Q and Y tables

Characteristic RZZZ: No errors found in this test

20:35:34 on 17.03.2020: Test run for user XXX completed

20:36:41 o'clock on 17.03.2020: Start test run for user XXX

Compare sizes of P or Q and X or Y tables for characteristic RZZZ

Characteristic RZZZ: Consistency check between P and X, Q and Y tables

Characteristic RZZZ: No errors found in this test

Compare characteristic values in SID/P/and Q tables for characteristic RZZZ

Characteristic RZZZ: Check for all values existing in P, Q and SID tables

Characteristic RZZZ: No errors found in this test

20:36:41 on 17.03.2020: Test run for user XXX completed

EPM add-in error: 500 Internal server error

While using EPM add-in in MS Excel there is, a quite common error called 500 Internal server error that may distract a users. It is appearing right away when the user just choose connection. Thus, the user even is not connected to BPC server.

As per error log (which looks like this - see below) there is no obvious reason for that error.

2020-03-12 10:47:46,829|ERROR|BPCProxy|FPMXLClient.BPCProxy.Common.Wcf.InterceptorChannelFactory`1+InterceptorRequestChannel.Request||||||19|The HTTP request is unauthorized with client authentication scheme 'Anonymous'. The authentication header received from the server was 'Negotiate'.#


2020-03-12 10:47:51,252|ERROR|BPC10Connection|FPMXLClient.Connection.RESTConnection.LoadDimensions||||||VSTA_Main|An error has occured on the server#


2020-03-12 10:47:51,342|ERROR|BPC10Connection|FPMXLClient.Connection.RESTConnection.LoadMetaData||||||VSTA_Main|An error has occured on the server#
2020-03-12 10:47:51,362|ERROR|Connection|FPMXLClient.Connection.ConnectionManager.LoadMetaData||||||VSTA_Main|An error has occured on the server#


2020-03-12 10:47:51,631|ERROR|BPCProxy|FPMXLClient.BPCProxy.Session.SessionServiceHelper.Logoff||||||VSTA_Main|<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01Transitional//EN"><html><head><title> Logoff Message </title><META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><style type="text/css"> body { font-family:tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;color:#333333;background-color:#FFFFFF; }td { font-family:tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:70%;color:#333333; }h1 { font-family:tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:160%;font-weight:bold;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:3px;color:#003366; }h2 { font-family:verdana,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:120%;font-style:italic;font-weight:bold;margin-top:6px;margin-bottom:6px;color:#999900; }p { font-family:tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;color:#333333;margin-top:4px;margin-bottom:4px; }ul { font-family:tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;color:#333333;list-style-type:square;margin-top:8px;margin-bottom:8px; }li { font-family:tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;color:#33333;margin-top:4px; }.emphasize { color:#333333;background-color:#C8E3FF;padding:5px;}.note { color:#CC6600; }a { font-family:tahoma,helvetica,sans-serif;text-decoration:underline;color:#336699; }a:visited { color:#001166; }a:hover { text-decoration:none; } </style></head><body><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%"><tr><td><h1> Logoff </h1><br><h2> What has happened? </h2><p> You logged off from the system. </p></td></tr><tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td class="emphasize"><strong> Note </strong><br><ul><li> The logoff took place 20200312 at 094751 system time. </li><li> Close all the windows in your browser and delete the "temporary Internet files" (Internet Explorer) and "private data" (Firefox). <BR> Depending on your browser setting, this deletion of data can take place automatically when you close the browser. </td></tr><tr></tr><tr><td><p></ul><br/><p class="note"></p><p> HTTP 200 - OK <br><p> Your SAP Internet Communication Framework Team#


2020-03-12 10:47:51,646|ERROR|Connection|FPMXLClient.Connection.ConnectionManager.CreateConnection||||||VSTA_Main|An error has occured on the server#


2020-03-12 10:48:49,726|ERROR|BPCProxy|FPMXLClient.BPCProxy.Common.Wcf.InterceptorChannelFactory`1+InterceptorRequestChannel.Request||||||19|The HTTP request is unauthorized with client authentication scheme 'Anonymous'. The authentication header received from the server was 'Negotiate'.#




It is worth to check if there is a dump related to this error – in backend in t-code ST22. Normally there is the ABAP dump which may indicate what is root cause of the error. In this case, there is related to error in the hierarchy. In the details of the dump there is even BPC dimension tech name and hierarchy ID listed. The details like this lead to the error. In my case, I just needed to delete broken hierarchy.

Runtime Errors         ASSERTION_FAILED

ABAP Program           CL_UJAM_HIERARCHY_STORE=======CP

Application Component  EPM-BPC-NW-ADM

Date and Time          12.03.2020 10:00:25

Short Text

    The ASSERT condition was violated.

Life after life of SAP NetWeaver and Business Suite/ECC

It was well known fact for some years now that SAP NetWeaver will be at some point reaching end of support. It is true for every software – at some point it is being replaced some something new and not being enhanced/maintained anymore. In the year 2017 the NetWeaver celebrated 20 years. However, SAP announced already earlier that end of mainstream maintenance will be on 31.12.2024 for version SAP NetWeaver 7.5. Similarly, for SAP NetWeaver 7.4 the date is set to 31.12.2020.

However, on 4.2.2020 SAP announced (via official update of maintenance roadmap) that they extended it to end of December 2027. In particular, for SAP NetWeaver 7.5 mainstream maintenance will be offered through 31.12.2027 and extended maintenance will be offered until end of 2030. Considering that by the year 2030 the NetWeaver will be death – it will be 33 years old if I count it correctly.

Concerning SAP Business Suite 7 – it will be also offered by mainstream maintenance until 31.12.2027 and extended maintenance until 31.12.2020. Nevertheless, there is a “but” like there always is. Mainstream maintenance will be provided for the latest three EhPs only after 1.1.2026. Another the “but” is that the extended maintenance comes with additional 2% fee on top of the respective support fee (20%). The 3^rd “but” is that SAP customer needs to buy SAP S/4HANA license already to show that they are in process of transition to S/4HANA.

In October of 2014 SAP extended support from 2020 until 2025 for the ECC/Business Suite 7. At the end the most pressing question of all SAP customers – “Is there any chance that SAP will extend their 2025 deadline ECC/Business Suite 7“ has an answer,

For both NW and BS - after 1.1.2031 only customer-specific maintenance will be offered.

Finally, concerning S/4HANA current SAP’s commitment is until 2040.

More information:

1648480 - Maintenance for SAP Business Suite 7 Software including SAP NetWeaver

2741041 - Maintenance for SAP NetWeaver 7.X Business Warehouse

2881788 - End of SAP Business Suite 7 mainstream maintenance

SAP Release Brochure - SAP release and maintenance strategy

Extended Innovation Commitment for SAP S/4HANA Clarity and Choice on SAP Business Suite 7