This is good one :-)

Hi, this is totally out off topic post. I've found very good blog. If you need to switch off your brain for a minute try check this out:

sapfacts.elsewhat.com/rand

Have fun.

SAP GUI for Windows 7.10

On 5^th of February 2007 new version of SAP GUI for WINDOWS has been introduced. As I mentioned in my article called Short history of SAP GUI you need this version of SAP GUI to access SAP systems based on “SAP Web Application Server 7.10 / NW Application Server 7.10”.

A list of SAP GUI for WIN versions as a prerequisite for accessing SAP functionality in systems based on SAP WAS:

• SAP GUI Win 6.20 with all SAP systems up to and including systems based on WAS 7.00 (with the exceptions being BI 7.0 and SCM 5.0 systems).
• SAP GUI for Win 6.40 with all SAP systems up to and including systems based on WAS 7.00.
• SAP GUI for Win 7.10 with all SAP systems up to and including systems based on WAS 7.10.
• You can not use SAP GUI for Win 6.20 or 6.40 SAP systems based on WAS 7.10.

You can obtain this version of SAP GUI via SAP service support portal. Then navigate yourself to downloads area->Installations and Upgrades->SAP Frontend Components->SAP GUI FOR WINDOWS-> SAP GUI FOR WINDOWS 7.10 CORE. Put two following components put to your download basket:

50083078_4 NW 2004s Presentation - 7.10 Compilation 1 Present. 1/2 379566 kB – contains main executable files

50083078_5 NW 2004s Presentation - 7.10 Compilation 1 Present. 2/2 210375 kB – contains SAP GUI for the Java Environment Release 7.00 rev 2

Right after that you can start with the downloading it via SAP Download Manager:

Version 7.10 of SAP GUI comes with following new components:

• SAP web dynpro Active Component Framework (ACF) - framework to integrate Active Components (ActiveX / Java Applets) into the Web dynpro. It is not a generic framework that allows integrating any component available into web dynpro. Instead, for every component that should be integrated into Web Dynpro there must be a specific adapter which in turn uses the ACF services. At the present there are two supported Components:

• Office Integration

• Adobe Integration

In the case of windows the adapters are written as ActiveXs. These ActiveXs can be installed onto the end user PC via an installation program "xACF.exe" provided by SAP.

• BI pre calculation service for MS Excel – you can install BI frontend as a standalone.
• SAPSprint – server-based printing on Windows (formerly SAPLPD)
• SAP GUI Screen Reader Extension – an interface allows a screen reader to access the SAP GUI object model at runtime and select the required information for speech and Braille output. It is based on SAP GUI Scripting API.

I selected a standard installation of GUI therefore I started:

X:\NW_2004s_Presentation\PRES1\GUI\WINDOWS\WIN32\SapGuiSetup.exe from first file 50083078_4. Here’s a selection of GUI components:

If you have used older version of GUI installed on your computer already you don’t need to de-install it first. Setup program will do this automatically.

Some of new features:

· In case GUI was installed from an installation server users have the possibility to enable automatic update from this server.

· System tabstrip of SAP Logon pad has a new popup window with tabstrips:

As well as a wizard for new shortcut to SAP system creation.

New frontend editor – for ABAP programming. Is integrated to ABAP workbench (TA: SE*), SE38, SE37, SE24). Its new user interfaces and is completely customizable. Frontend editor integrates all modern code editing features like: code hints, code completion, . It is a universal programming tool and works with most programming languages with defined syntax schema, such as ABAP, eCATT, BSP and so on. It is fast, flexible and easy to use. Is available with SAP GUI for Windows 6.40 Patch level 10 or higher however, you need SAP system using NetWeaver 2004s since basis version 700 - SAP Application Server 7.0.

• New debugger – has a high volume of new and known functions that can be called using menus or icons. It requires an additional external session where it runs. By usage of this session has certain handling advantages as well as advantages with regard to resource consumption. It is possible to process an unlimited number of data objects simultaneously and their visibility depends only on size of screen.

Have fun with new SAP GUI :-)

SAP Active Global Support (AGS)

Have you ever created SAP OSS message and wondering how it has been processed? Have you been surprised when your message has been marked as “Send to SAP” then answered from somebody from Germany then set back to “Customer action” after you replied message was transferred to some other SAP support site at different continent because in Germany was nigh time?

So let’s image. It is Friday’s afternoon and you can’t wait for weekend to begin. Some SAP function people raised an issue, it looks like that it requires immediate attention of SAP. You raise “Very high” priority message on OSS. Message comes to AGS center which belongs to your region. Within the SAP AG group Active Global Support centers are organized in Global Support Centers (GSC). Most likely your customer message comes to GSC Ireland, in Dublin. This centre handles following regions: northern and central Europe and North America. Dublin’s GSC is a part of Primary Support this includes: GSC Austria for the German speaking countries, GSC Spain for southern Europe and Latin America, as well other units in Asia and Australia as well. Particular person in GSC responsible for the SAP module/component to which is your message related starts to process your message proceeding. As a first task this person controls completeness of your message like: component, priority, etc. Once very high message is received person makes phone call to customer and inform him about receiving and starting processing of message. As a part of message solving person analyze an issue, looks for relevant SAP notes which solves this issue if it is already known, search in knowledge base where similar problems are tracked, connects to customer SAP system via remote connection (you as a customer must enable this connection on SAP service portal) in order to reproduce the issue live in the system, seek up error in program via debugger, trying to adjust SAP standard coding to fix problem. If person is unable to resolve the problem because it as very application specific related to some sub module of SAP software message just will be rerouted to relevant support group which pays an attention to specific sub module to some Centers of Expertise (CoE) e.g. at Walldorf in Germany, Philadelphia USA. CoEs are involved in deep problem analyzing of very high customer messages. Application specialist in Walldorf analysis an issue and consider to change of coding. He needs to discus this issue with development specialist who directly developing particular functionality of SAP sub module. They contact each other through CoE chat room. Because of time – remember it is lately Friday’s afternoon they just agree on resolution – there must be change of coding. Physically change will be done by another colleague from India’s support centre. SAP is accompanying “follow the sun” principle.

The principle is based on exploiting the time difference between the GSC sites to extend services during times when a local site is closed. It takes place 3 times a day:

• afternoon: Walldorf -> Philadelphia
• night: from Philadelphia to India
• next morning: India -> Walldorf
  

By usage of this principle SAP can assure that new messages processed/received 24x7 without interruption regardless of where the customer is located.

Colleague from Dublin and Philadelphia are gone home for weekend. India processor of message is implementing the change. He issues new SAP note with the solution of this particular problem. Customer is informed about this solution immediately via service support portal. This is only one particular example of customer message solving. A lot of different scenarios may happen in all kinds of computer problems. In such a cases SAP is suppose to cooperating with all involved/affected parties (hardware, operating system and database vendors) very closely in order to solve the issue.

SAP AGS organization is taking care of around 20.000 SAP customers with 64.500 SAP software installations across six continents. There are over 2.000 employees involved, over 40 countries and 6.000 developers serve as a backend. Their workload consists of solving more then: 800.000 customer messages per year, 34.000 service sessions (GoingLive Check, EarlyWatch Check), 1.500 onsite services (Safeguarding and Optimalization Services).

I think SAP support came a long way and the procedures and processes within are quite matured. A lot of SAP application management companies may take an insight to SAP AG’s AGS and take lessons learned.

There’s a nice blog related to SAP support topic at blogs.ittoolbox.com/sap/support. Homepage of SAP AGS is here.

In addition, here’s SAP’s classification of customer messages:

• Very high - This priority is reserved exclusively for situations in which you production system is down or you intend to go live very soon and this issue will prevent your production system from going live.
• High - Used for situations where there is a severe functionality loss but the system remains operational and processing can continue.
• Medium - A program or functionality error has occurred but processing can still continue, or a non-business critical function is not performing properly.
• Low - Request for service or information or a problem has been identified. Minor impact.

SAP ecosystem

My definition: SAP ecosystem is a chain of partners, software vendors and others who can contribute to innovation and effectiveness of SAP platform.

SAP was struggling for creation of support program for their partners many years. A long time ago partnering with SAP was based on a relationships with external consultancy companies which have knowledge of SAP technology and they helped SAP to grow. Those companies were mostly system integrators. Now when market is full and all big SAP implementation have been done SAP is trying to extent their partner collection to all the others who can SAP help with to stay on the market leading position. SAP NetWeaver partner program has its roots in former CSP (Complementary Software Program). The principle of ecosystem is to set up partnership relationships between SAP and other vendors in order to create Industry Value Networks (IVNs). SAP wants to have an active and energetic ecosystem around its systems because there is no innovation which can help for everybody. On other hand partner, customers, ISVs, and system integrators are communicating, collaborating, and building innovative solutions. And will all that contribution can SAP innovate their software portfolio faster then ever.

How can you contribute to SAP ecosystem?

• SAP Developer community (SDN) – wealthy source of technical information, e-learning, expert discussions, documentations related to SAP technology. Membership is free for everybody.
• Enterprise Services Community (ES Community) – Network for customers and partners together with SAP are cooperating on definitions of enterprise services.
• Business Process Expert Community (BPX) – Basically it is the same as SDN but for business process experts. Information for business process experts who design and optimize business processes before SAP implementation gets started.
• Industry value networks (IVNs) - Industry-specific ecosystems that bring together customers, partners, and SAP to focus on the co-innovation of industry solutions to support critical business challenges.
• "Powered by SAP NetWeaver" partner solutions – 3^rd party software solutions that are certified to run on the SAP NetWeaver platform which extends standard NW functionality.
• "SAP xApps Certified" partner solutions – 3^rd party solutions that are built as composite applications that on run on the SAP NetWeaver platform to work with SAP software and integrate at all levels of the IT landscape.

One notice how SAP’s ecosystem is growing up: In 2005 SAP SDN had approximately 150.000 members next year 2006 there were 260.000 members. We’ll see how big SDN will be in this year.

The core of ecosystem is enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Enterprise SOA is software architecture designed for enterprise’s purposes with utilization of (web) services. The aim is to design of business applications, by enabling rapid composition of business solutions. Business logic is encapsulated as enterprise services small particular functionality components that can be quickly reassembled. More regarding enterprise SOA topic in some of next articles. Stay tuned.

P.S. In addition SAP sometimes distinguishes between: platform ecosystem, partner ecosystem and so on.

- update 01/01/2014 -

As this post got obsolete over the years. See new post here about SAP ecosystem renewed.

Duet (formerly know as a Mendocino)

In past decades companies turned out investments in large scale computer systems which were best-of-breed software in their particular areas available on the market at that point of time. Now they have heterogeneous systems and the necessity of integration of such a different platforms is popping up more and more importantly. The systems have to be extended in the exiting infrastructure which is quite a complex task. For many years there is a term interoperability became popular. It would be nice to have systems which are able to exchange information between each other across company’s IT systems.

SAP has made contribution to interoperability in several fields. Integration with office software – MS Office started back in 90s while 4.6 version of SAP R/3 has been introduced. It was/is possible to download report’s outputs into MS Excel/Word (RTF)/HTML/SAP Maps formats. It used OLE2 interface to connect any application run on MS Windows which supports OLE2. This is very common functionality of SAP GUI and it is available almost in every SAP transaction. Based on ALV (SAP List Viewer) technology this integration has been widespread. Via ActiveX technology SAP put MS Excel’s graphs/MS Project’s timelines in SAP transaction and so on.

Now in the century of web services the story continues. It is called Duet. It is jointly Microsoft-SAP developed product based on MS .NET framework and SAP NetWeaver platform as a foundation for SAP’s ESA (Enterprise Services Architecture). The aim is a seamless data exchange between users’s desktop and SAP enterprise applications. Duet uncovers selected business processes and information from mySAP ERP Suite.

e.g.:

Time management – scheduling and billing process according Outlook’s calendar into SAP ERP.

Leave management – employee can request leave (vacation, sickness ...) via Outlook and via SAP’s workflow request is transferred to responsible person who can approve/deny it.

Organizational management – access to HR data via Outlook’s contacts interface.

Budget monitoring – viewing of SAP BW reports in Outlook’s inbox.

to MS Office Professional 2003. Through ESA features functionality of mySAP ERP 2004 is available as a web (enterprise) service and thus is available using MS Office environment. According SAP such an approach is groundbreaking in collaboration point of view and because Duet brings together the worlds of business productivity applications and enterprise applications it should revolutionize the way how Information Workers interact with enterprise applications.

Duet architecture

There are 3 mayor basic components within architecture:

• Duet Client – add-on to MS Office environment, it resides components to support integration with MS Office:
• Runtime engine – interprets UI metadata and user’s actions
• Secure cache – stores application data, query assembly, metadata. Frequently used data remains local
• Output queue – queue between secure cache while user goes online from offline mode
• Duet Server - it facilitates communication between client and SAP application, components:
• Runtime metadata repository – holds application and solution metadata
• Routing module – receive notification from SAP application and routes then to MS Office client via MS Exchange
• Deployment module – propagates updates to metadata… to client system
• Service mapper module – helps deployment in production environment
• Authorization module – built based on MS Windows Authorization Manager maps Duet’s users roles to SAP roles.

• mySAP ERP Suite - as an backend with SAP Software Add-On in a front of backend.

Runtime metadata in Duet Server stores the metadata to portray application user interface, configuration and routing information for each user role. There is a possibility to go around Duet server and connect SAP ERP backed directly in order to reduce workload on the corporate intranet.

Another possibility is that client application can download data and its updates asynchronously. In this case Duet server as itself doesn’t become performance bottleneck. Server supports deployment in a high availability clustered environment with multiple MS Exchange systems and several SAP backend systems. There‘s a deployment module which propagates automatically metadata, forms, documents from server to clients according user role. Deployment logic is encapsulated in .NET components.

Last component of Duet’s architecture is SAP Software Add-On there are 2 following components:

· Service Bundling Engine – handling service requests to mySAP ERP Suite

· Metadata Repository and configuration tools

Add-On serves as ESA component of SAP NetWeaver. It does include web services adapter for connecting SAP applications, service bundling component for handling service calls directly from the client and application metadata storage. Add-on was indented to metadata storage to enable deliver user’s responses, SAP process logic, business rules and customizing parameters. In this manner there is no impact to SAP application under and no intervention to SAP is needed.

It seems that Duet may become very useful tool and let see how it will be flourish in another similar initiatives (IBM’s Project Harmony for simplify SAP and Lotus Notes integration). My personal feeling integration with popular MS products is good for enterprises which are addicted to Microsoft very faithfully. But I would appreciate more to have such software running on more open platforms. I would say Duet is another step to integration of SAP data to desktop which will lead to integration to web browser in future.

Basically – to access SAP without SAP (GUI) - this is what Duet is about

In order to prepare this article I borrowed some of the words from following materials:

• Duet homepage: duet.com
• Duet at sap.com
• Duet at microsoft.com
• Microsoft-SAP alliance.
• Why Mendocino Duet blog.

Project Muse – new approach to SAP GUI

In one of my previous posts I depicted the history of SAP GUIs. Here I would like to introduce the future advance of SAP to User Interface (UI) - project Muse.

At SAPPHIRE 2006 at Orlando SAP announced a new approach to UI. It does use heavily technologies which are used for web like Adobe’s Flash/Flex/Interactive Forms (Adobe announced this as an Apollo framework – it is universal client runtime platform which allows web based applications to run online and offline). The purpose is to simplify user experience while working with SAP. Muse is not intended to be substitute for standard SAP GUI. However this is not easy to say that. The true is that SAP GUI is thick client and it needs to be installed on every user workstation and in a case of Muse there are all components required for Muse available on today’s computers already. Project Muse is invented as the best of both shores: robust “thick client” capabilities that seamlessly consume and interact with web-based “thin client” capabilities. Of course Muse requires to be installed on the user’s workstation so it is still thick client but hopefully it won’t demand almost 500MB of hard drive space as SAP GUI does. So from deployment point of view Muse should be easily maintainable in corporate’s environment then SAP GUI is. From long term point of view it may happen that Muse will be spread over the standard SAP GUI and will become most popular than GUI in SAP professional users community. The demand from users in this case will be to increase of Muse capabilities over standard SAP GUI in future. All the processes are executed in backend SAP systems so it’s user’s own choice what he/she does prefer to interact with the business processes.

There are 2 basics elements which Muse consists of:

• Frame – with menu for users, open session as an thumbnails, navigations; there is role based functionality available for users on left side.
• Canvas – place where user is working, it fills up big part of screen , here’s screen of actual transaction is displayed. E.g. Frame can be run based on Flash and canvas as HTML. Other possibility is a web dynpro /PDF file/ActiveX component displayed in area of canvas.

Picture legend: Red – frame
Green - canvas

The big part of functionally is leveraged on SAP Enterprise Portals (there’s a new name for EP: SAP NetWeaver Portal). EP is behind all of role based functions assignments, is does display canvas in Muse container. In additions there are a lot of others functionality derived from EP same as they are running on EP since its today’s versions. Like EP iViews and others EP portlets and portal content can be consumed by Muse’s canvas. Muse has "skin it" feauture so you can easily incorporate you brand into Muse.

Muse is able to connect only solutions based on SAP NetWeaver 2004s and mySAP ERP 2005 because backend system must be able to provide and consume services plus there are a lot of other technical prerequisites. Availability of Muse should be via series of enhancement packages for mySAP ERP 2005.

For further information see:

• MUSE product factsheet.
• One of the first blogs about Muse is Jeff Worrd’s one.
• Demo of Muse.

According SDN forums there’s acronym of Muse called Smart Client or in some SAP OSS notes there is mentioned term Muse Client. I assume they have the same meaning: project Muse.

P.S.: I have not seen Muse live in action. All the information I’ve posted here are gathered from internet and from my friends from SAP AG :-)

Update 30/01/2007:

According SAP OSS project Muse has two deliverables:

- The SAP NetWeaver Business Client

· Built using state-of-the-art UI technology that can flexibly consume portal services, application content and tasks directly from the back-end systems.

· A rich, service-oriented client that provides most optimal end-to-end performance, familiar desktop integration (e.g. drag-and-drop of a table to Excel) and dramatically improves user experience.

· Represents a new breed of clients that bridge the gap of today's thick clients (e.g. SAPGUI) and thin HTML clients, while catering to the high demands of business users with upcoming Rich Internet Applications (RIA) like those that will be based on Adobe’s Apollo, Microsoft’s WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)/Vista or IBM’s RPC (Rich Client Platform)/RCP.

- Simplified and task-oriented mySAP ERP content

· The role-based ERP content and line-of-business applications will be accompanied with worklists that provide insight into the transactional systems and objects. Rebuild main mySAP ERP UIs using intuitive floor plans and UI building block methodology based on Web Dynpro technology, to increase consistency and ease of use, but also the efficiency and speed to develop new applications UIs.

· Harmonization and consolidation of UI technologies centers on Web Dynpro. Legacy UI technology like SAPGUI’s Dynpro will continue to work and will adapt to the new environment and look-and-feel of the SAP NetWeaver Business Client.

Short history of SAP GUI

Every information system needs to interact with the user in some way. Basic term GUI (or frontend) stands for Graphical User Interface and its common function is allow user to connect to the system and show /process user interaction (e.g. user’s inputs) with graphics in addition to text information. Predecessor to graphics interface was text based interface – CLI (Command Line Interfaces). As an example you can imagine first computer terminals. Then mouse (or other pointing device) feature was added and finally developed to GUI.

SAP AG intended to have a user centered design of their software. Over the period SAP GUI followed improvements as their flagship ERP - software. As a first step there was an R/2 user interface based on terminal screens.

It had following features: only on screen menu, list of function keys, message area, lines to separate field groups, question mark indicated required field.

Next step was R/2 user interface with CUA interface. It provided menu and a clickable pushbutton bar with the most important function keys.

Early version of SAP R/3 like 1.0 had characteristic like: leadings dots for field labels, field length not indicated, menu bar, pushbutton bar at the bottom showing the most important function keys.

In version 1.1 it had added: Field length indicated by background colors, fast paths in menus (for keyboard access).

And there was an influence of SAP technologies like: dynpro (dynamic screen with tables and elements), steploop (processing of dynpro) and ABAP list technology (for interactive reporting).

Next version R/3 version 2.0 introduced following: featured of new Windows 3.1 and other supported platforms (OSF/Motif, OS/2 and Mac OS), Windows look and feel (some), no leading dots for field labels, 3D look for entry fields, system and application toolbar, icons in system toolbar.

Version 2.0 was followed by 2.1 with elements like: new graphical elements: checkboxes, radiobuttons, group boxes, push buttons on screen, new icon look, list colors, Windows GUI becomes “standard GUI”. This “Windows version” was dominating GUI for SAP. It really looked like a "real" Windows application nevertheless, it is still terminal simulation only.

Next generation of R/3 started with 3.0 versions here new elements came: table control (based on dynpro technology; replacement for the steploop), icons on buttons, application toolbar, and proportional font for field labels.

In 3.1: Windows95 look: flat buttons (customizable), tabstrip control (dynpro technology), ABAP List Viewer (ALV).

Next major release of R/3 was 4.0: To evade difficult navigation more and more information is put into tabstrips of screens in order to have minimum screens in transactions.

Followed by 4.5: MS ActiveX components were used to build new controls: splitters, trees, text fields, HTML, etc., ALV became a grid control.












Another principal release was 4.6: With this GUI got renewed design by Frog Design company. Once upon a time there existed nice page at Frog Design site where all new GUI elements had been introduces but now it is disappeared.

Main goal was to get rid of initial screens and to reduce the need for screen changes, screen with tree added to the left sidebar, single screen paradigm.

In years of dotcom age there was ITS server introduces which translated SAP screens to HTML code and then sending them to user’s web browser. Development of ITS started with mySAP.com Workplace initiative.

Nowadays is the most poplar version of SAP GUI for WIN platform version 6.2 and 6.4. It matured into a universal client for accessing SAP functionality in SAP almost all applications such as: mySAP ERP, mySAP Business Suite (mySAP CRM, mySAP SCM and mySAP PLM, …), and NetWeaver components like SAP BW. SAP GUI functions like a browser. It gets information from the SAP server like what, where, when and how, to display contents in its window.

SAP GUI family has there main branches:

• SAP GUI for WINDOWS environment – for MS WINDOWS platform, provides “Windows like” user experience, integration with other applications (MS Office, MS Outlook), based on OLE interfaces and/or ActiveX controls.
• SAP GUI for JAVA environment - unified SAP frontend for multiple platforms
• SAP GUI for HTML – by SAP ITS server SAP screens elements in transactions gets mapped to HTML using HTMLb (business HTML) functions.

Next release - 7.10 of SAP GUI for WIN will be released on 05^th of February 2007. There will be integration to new version of MS Windows: Vista and joint SAP and MS developed tool called Duet (formerly Mendocino).

To have a complet overview of SAP's user interfaces where SAP count's following:

• Web Dynpro - provides the development and runtime environment for creating web applications. Web Dynpro development environment consists of a set of integrated tools supporting the following core functions: specifying dialog flows; designing and composing views, (for example, the graphical presentation of a page); modeling business data types and customizing all of these aspects.
  
• SAP GUI family (see above)
  
• mobile UI - Online technology, where a mobile device (mobile phones, PDAs, etc.) connected to a web server, based on technologies such as WAP, wireless LANs, Bluetooth, etc. The aim is to extend and extend SAP's WAS or ITS, with features to provide technology which extends SAP's WAS or ITS, with features that allow application developers to create and modify mobile applications.

In my some of my next article I do focus on alternative next generation of SAP GUI called Muse - build on SAP xApps, Duet, Interactive forms based on Adobe, SAP NW Portal, mobile and voice solutions.

Despite all the progress what GUI has gone I’m still wondering why the hell there is so strange light blue color in SAP GUI while connected to SAP NetWeaver systems, like on this picture :-)

For preparation of this article it is been used this article as a guide SAP OSS pages.

SAP DB, mySQL MaxDB, whatDB?

SAP DB, mySQL MaxDB, whatDB?

What I knew before I’ve started to search some information in order to clarify those names of this database product was following: SAP had long term issue with database software. Although SAP is known as a powerful ERP vendor with its highly OS and DB platform independent software it was always the pain when some other companies get their piece of cake in business e.g. in database software area. When SAP delivers its R/3 there was always a space for database provider in order to get R/3 run. For many year SAP wanted to involve their own DB platform in SAP EPR software implementations. It is still not clear what is the origin of SAP DB but according this it seems that SAP had it spoon off from ADABAS D version 6.1.15.57 very old and reliable DB system called ADABAS D from German Software AG company in late 90’s. Software AG has it own branch of ADABAS includes advanced database management system. ADABAS database development started in 1977 as a research project of Technical University in Berlin. Early 80s it became a database product that subsequently was owned by companies like: Nixdorf, Siemens Nixdorf, Software AG and today by SAP AG. The name of database was changed several times like: VDN, Reflex, Supra 2, DDB/4, Entire SQL-DB-Server and ADABAS.

ADABAS is known as world's fastest OLTP databases very famous for many years. After SAP AG took over one arm of ADABAS in 1997 he completely renewed and enhanced ABABAS and changes its name to SAP DB. So finally SAP has its own database. On other hand there SAP APO system has been released and one of its features is live Cache. To be simplified you can imagine live cache as one huge memory which is able to store all the data from large (TB) in operational memory – very high volumes of data must be permanently held always available in computer memory. This was another point of view why SAP needed its own DB system. Some of SAP software like mySAP Supply Chain Management - Advanced Planner and Optimizer (SCM-APO) and mySAP Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) use SAP DB solely. SAP DB is supporting all mainstream OS like: Linux (Intel), Microsoft Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64 AIX. Since October 2000 SAP DB sources additionally were released as open source under a GNU General Public License (GPL).

From SAP DB to mySQL MaxDB.

Lately in May 2003, SAP started cooperation with MySQL AB. As part of this agreement, the SAP DB database will be delivered under the name MySQL MaxDB from database version 7.5. With this agreement MySQL acquired full commercial rights to develop and market future releases of SAP DB. SAP will continue its investment in SAP DB development, maintenance and support. It seems that in future there will be only one name of this product MaxDB for details see here. For existing or new SAP customers this means no change. They obtain support of SAP AG and profit from open source development model.

When you buy SAP NetWeaver now you get:

Database Version SAP Release

MaxDB 7.6 SAP Netweaver 2004s

MaxDB 7.5 SAP Netweaver 2004

If you want to evaluate MaxDB you can download it from mysql.com from SDN (under technologies area) or previous releases from sapdb.org.

P.S.: Do you have some information about SAP DB, mySQL MaxDB, whatDB etc? Please feel free to post in comments area. We can enrich this article together!

SAP NetWeaver 2004s ABAP miniSAP - installation

It ‘s been 5 years that I’m using miniSAP based on basis version 4.6. I obtained it as a CD included in ABAP Objects: Introduction to Programming SAP Applications book.

At that point of time it was extremely useful for me to have such a nice playground to try my first ABAP codes and getting into basis module. I ran it on my notebook so I was able to play with it in time that I could not use more effectively like on airports, in trains and etc. After years passed and SAP introduced first version of WAS it was 6.10 I tried to install it to my laptop as miniSAP as well.

But version like 6.10 and 6.20 I didn’t find very useful and due to the fact that I had a high volume of my ABAP codes running in 4.6 I stayed with this version. Anyway the new functionally like more OO oriented ABAP, BSP, webdynpro and other new featured of WAS forced me to taka a look on the newest WAS version 7.10. On the download section of SDN they released SAP NetWeaver 2004s ABAP miniSAP on approximately early of autumn of 2006. Because I’m interesting in ABAP stack of SAP NetWeaver Application Server I’ve downloaded Full ABAP Edition-Trial (with Web Dynpro for ABAP).

If you plan to install it please reserve at least 4 hours to do this. The time depends on you hardware. SAP recommends using computer with 1GB of RAM and during the installation you need to have at least 21GB on your hard drive. Later on database size will be about 8.8GB on drive. Please consider that database size will be growing very fast while you will be working with the system. Every transaction you getting in generate compiled version of objects and this activity eats space rapidly. Therefore I do not recommend installing other languages into system again because of database size. If I remember clearly my miniSAP 4.6 had 2GB size in database level. After 5 years using it had 4 GB size of database. MiniSAP NW 2004s has 8.8GB after installation. It is really impressive. One thins is that BW 7.0 is included in this version of miniSAP as well. On other hand basis module from 6.4 to 7.0 got as lot of new functionally and SAP changed database system as well. On 6.4 it was MS SQL Server now it is MaxDB.

So within the next screenshots is described installation procedure:

1. Once you run setup you need to accept license agreement:


2. You choose installation folder and master password:




3. So we are ready to go!


4. Couple of screens when installation goes during the installations stages:

5. Done!

6. Here’s SAP Management console:

7. First logon:

If you are interesting in running of SAP BW. You need to login to 001 client as SAP* create your own user in SU01 transaction and log in with your own user. Then run Administration workbench of BW (RSA1) and create and assign of logical system to your client, replicate DataSources form its own BW system.

8. So RSA1 here it comes:

P.S. In this version BW comes with no Business Content (BCT). I’m wondering if someone was able to install BCT to this miniSAP :-).

SAP BW: BEx Connectivity Issue

In today’s off shored world we connect SAP systems which are hidden beyond several network’s firewalls. When some project starts normally basis people are investigating if connection to SAP GUI via standard DIALOG protocol is working. In case we need to connect SAP BW server there is a reporting tool called BEx which needs to be connected to BW backend for creation/testing reports.

If we do not pay enough attention developers get following error while trying connection to BW via BEx.

Error Group

RFC_ERROR_COMMUNICATION

Message

Connect from SAP gateway to RFC server failed

Connect_PM GWHOST=148.100.100.1, GWSERV=sapgw02, ASHOST=148.100.100.1,

SYSNR=02

LOCATION SAP-Gateway on host sapbw1 / sapgw02

ERROR connection to host sapbw1.mycompany.com, service sapgw02

timed out

TIME Fri Jun 4 09:22:47 2006

RELEASE 620

COMPONENT NI (network interface)

VERSION 36

RC -12

MODULE nixxi.c

LINE 812

DETAIL NiPConnect

COUNTER 2

This problem can be resolved by implementing of SAP note no. 447882 (you need SAP OSS account to access this site). Basically you need to adjust firewall settings. Firewall must be able to accept listening on port 33xx (where xx corresponds to your SAP BW system number).

How to search for the data in PSA – choice 2.

How to search for the data in PSA – choice 2.

In my previous post I showed how to search for the date in PSA via standard transparent table in dictationary which underlay behind the PSA. There is another possibility more convenient in BW manner. The idea is to create DataSource of PSA and then check the data with standard BW tool: Extractor checker (TA RSA3).

At first we create DataSource for particular node in PSA tree. Navigate yourself in the PSA tree and choose item “Generate Export DataSource” from right click menu. In this way SAP BW does generates a DataSource for your PSA object.

Once this operation is has successfully finished you should be able to see similar message like following:

Click on the icon of DataSource to explore your newly created DataSource:

On the next screen take a look on the name of your DataSource in field DataSource.

As a next step you can perform PSA searching in Extractor checker. Start up TA: RSA3 and choose your Datasource technical name form previous screen as a DataSource name.

Now just run extraction. Please feel free to filter out entries based on Selection section of RSA3 selection screen.

How to search for the data in PSA – choice 1.

Once you are working with SAP Business Warehouse (BW) your job is about data analysis most likely. You need to find check the data in data targets (info cubes/ODSs) explore how data got into these objects, what is the transformation logic and when the bug is somewhere here to compare the data in source or in the PSA area with the data in targets.

One of the ways how to search for the data in PSA is described in following material. First navigate to your DataSource in PSA tree within Modeling section in Administrator section in TA RSA1 and choose “Delete PSA data” item from right click menu:

On next screen that appears scroll to right first section of screen and try to find field called “DDIC table of the PSA”. The content of this field is dictationary table of the PDA data.

You can browse it in SE 11 for instance:

Here you can choose “Contents” icon or use keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+F10.