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Following my previous post I got a couple of responses from folks out on the interweb and decided I’d steal their suggestions and expand on their consulting clichés. After all repetition and overuse are the start point for any cliché and this means I’m doing my part to sustain the cycle – reuse, recycle, renew!
I felt compelled to come up with a 2-by-2 matrix to help you decide whether your project is cliché generator or a cliché consumer.
This is the first in a series of posts that I will write regarding upgrading your SAP system. 2010 is anticipated as the year of the upgrade (you heard it here first – maybe not) as many SAP customers saw an upgrade as an easily avoidable expense in the midst of the economic carnage of the last 12-18 months. Also, SAP is on a push to get customers off earlier releases and up to ECC 6.0 and various EHP (enhancement packs) to make upgrades a thing of the past.
Excuse a note of skepticism about the end-of-upgrades-as-we-know-them, I suspect the path and the mechanism to get new functionality will change. The text book methodology and approach will change, but I suspect SAP customers will be hesitant to let go completely of previous approaches to upgrades. Sounds like a topic for a future blog post.
In these posts I’ll address some of the upfront considerations before you embark on an upgrade, then progress on to ways to leverage some of your existing assets to make the process as successful as possible. Along the way I’ll discuss the impact on your SAP landscape, non-SAP systems, and other ongoing projects you may have in motion. As a wise man I once worked for said–and I’m paraphrasing–“we don’t want to rebuild the plane in midair.” Trying to get it in the hangar without passengers onboard is a noble goal, but perhaps not completely realistic.
This discussion is pitched at a fairly high level although an in depth discussion is easily set up by clicking here to contact us.
For more on SAP Upgrades download the white papers:
SAP Upgrade Checklist
Customization Risk Analysis in an SAP Upgrade Project
As always, comments and feedback are welcome, but I ask you to be civil. Your experiences are not the same as mine, I can learn from you and I hope you can learn a little from me. Let’s begin.
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DataXstream has announced a strategic partnership with Dell and VMware in the hardware and Virtualization realms of SAP and ERP business solutions. With the partnership, DataXstream becomes a preferred SAP solution provider for Dell storage and server hardware. DataXstream also gains certification in VMware solutions, thus furthering their Virtualization implementation expertise. To learn more about these partnerships visit DataXstream’s Partners Page.
DataXstream will be exhibiting at the SAP TECHED 09 Conference at the beautiful Phoenix Convention Center located in the heart of downtown Phoenix – October 13 – 16. Stop by the DataXstream booth and see how we can make your next project a success.
For more information about the conference, please visit the SAP TECHED 09 Conference website.
You may find it necessary to change the the UID of the sidadm and orasid accounts on your SAP server. The process is not difficult but there are a number of steps that must be followed for it to work correctly. The following is an outline of steps that I have followed in that past on AIX running oracle. Please note you should always test this on a test server to develop a proper procedure for your specific OS and installation. You should also confirm that you have a current backup just in case.
Lets Review The High Level Steps
So I have been working on a list of blog topics. I actually have an outline that is 3 pages long, but I am not going to blog on any of the topics on the outline because my experience this week at the client site I think was useful and relevant. We are at crunch time. A lot of things have stacked up and as usual we are working to a very aggressive deadline. In recent years I have typically held many leadership roles on SAP projects. Usually heading up the technical team, working as the project architect or serving as the overall project manager for the SAP project. In my current roll I heading up the Basis Team in a very hands on role. I have been doing my best not to interfere with the development team. The development team is headed up by a good friend of mine and a very talented senior SAP consultant. This week we have had a number of SAP performance defects logged. Upon a quick initial analysis it was clear that the SAP performance issues were not Basis related. The development team is currently buried in the perfect storm of conversions finally coming together and the test team finally kicking the tires on the rest of the delivered development interface objects. This gave me the opportunity to pitch in get my hands dirty and look at some code and performance issues. We knocked off a significant SAP ABAP performance issue with a 100 fold improvement when all was said and done. Looking back on the problem it was obvious to me, but I missed a couple of clues that should have pointed me to the problem even sooner. This is what this blog post is about.
GuiXT is a scripting environment that allows for the creation of huge macros in the SAP GUI environment. The HP testing product LoadRunner uses GuiXT to generate user load for system stability testing purposes. This document is designed to show you how to install the GuiXT plug-in if it isn’t already, and how to fix some errors that are less than descriptive.
GuiXT is a SAPGUI plug-in that is selected during the launch pad install. If you don’t select it during the initial install, you can run the installer again and select only GuiXT.
If everything is working correctly when you open a GUI session, you will see “Activate GuiXT” under the “Customize Local Layout” menu.
WARNING:
Neither the author of this article nor DataXstream can be held responsible if the reader breaks the registry while making this correction. Whenever working inside the registry, it is good practice to take a full back-up before continuing. Also break up any keys before directly editing them.
To open the registry editor click ‘Start’->’Run’ and enter regedit.
The registry editor window appears:
To take a full back-up of the registry, click ‘File’->’Export’ while ‘My Computer’ is highlighted:
Save the file somewhere you won’t forget and with a name you will easily recognize:
With the full backup, we can now feel safe as we make our changes. Drill down through the tree starting with
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SAP\SAGUI Front\SAP Frontend \Server\Adminstration.
Look for a key titled DisappearItems. If it exists, export by following the previous steps with just that key highlighted, then delete the key.
The option ‘Activate GuiXT’ should now be available in the Customize layout menu.
Another issue that I’ve seen with GuiXT in regards to LoadRunner is LR not being able to find the GuiXT Dynamic Link Library (.dll) when excuting a test script. The fix is easy; Copy ‘guixt.dll’ from the directory path C:\Program Files\SAP\FrontEnd\SAPgui\ to C:\WINDOWS\system32\.
These fixes assume that you have administrative access to your computer. If you do not, please contact your IT/Help Desk department to either gain admin rights or have a tech follow these steps for you.
Learn how to increase visibility of your company’s accounts receivables.
Most SAP implementations do not provide good visibility into one of the most important assets that your company has, namely your accounts receivables portfolio.
Join Cforia on Thursday July 23, as Cforia Software shares a business improvement process that will help your company improve its receivables visibility. This will allow your company to implement improved Accounts Receivables workflow.
Attend this webinar to learn the benefits of, and guidelines for maximizing visibility into your AR portfolio:
A practical demonstration will show how Automation Tools can help your receivables department reach increased levels of visibility.
Learn how to increase your Credit Department’s value through
automation and process improvement.
Many companies are looking for answers to help them adapt to the current economic environment. Your customers are requiring more contact to pay on time, while your management is requesting reduced head count and better cash forecast reporting.
Join Cforia on Wednesday July 22nd as they along with Quote to Cash Solutions (Q2C) present a credit, collections and chargeback automation project planning template that will maximize cash flow and improve customer satisfaction through improving Accounts Receivables Departmental productivity.
Attend this webinar to lean how to create a successful project plan to automate Credit, Collections & Chargebacks.
The formal presentation will be followed by an open Question and Answer session.
As a consultant, I have the opportunity to work on many different SAP installations. I continue to be surprised by the discovery that many of these companies are not properly managing their change pointer tables, allowing these tables to continuously increase in size over long periods of time. Using data forensics, I have seen change pointer record counts as large as two billion (and still growing), and change pointer record creation dates that have aged many years with status of both processed and unprocessed.
What are change pointers, where are they located, and what is their purpose in an SAP system?
When turned on in configuration, change pointer records are written to SAP change pointer data tables when master data is maintained, as part of the shared master data facility. Their primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of master data additions and changes from the SAP host system to remote systems, via ALE using IDOCs. Configuration customizing is used to determine whether or not change pointer record creation is turned on or off, and if turned on, which message types and data table-field changes will trigger the creation of change pointer records.
Change pointer records reside in data tables BDCP and BDCPS. There is also a view BDCPV which combines fields from these two tables. Table BDCP is the primary change pointer data table, and table BDCPS contains the status (processed or unprocessed) of the change pointer record.
A new change pointer record is created in the ‘unprocessed’ state, and creates a “demand” in the SAP system to create an outbound IDOC. This “demand” is recognized by the SAP program RBDMIDOC (typically scheduled in a periodic batch job) which triggers the creation of the outbound IDOC, and then alters the state of the change pointer record to ‘processed’. But while the status of change pointer record is marked as ‘processed’, the record still resides in the BDCP and BDCPS tables.
So, how are these consumed change pointer records deleted from the change pointer tables? This is accomplished with the SAP Program RBDCPCLR (typically scheduled in a periodic batch job). Depending on your business processes, the life cycle of a change pointer record is typically not that long. If you are distributing your master data change IDOCs to remote systems daily, then the related change pointer records can be purged daily. If your distribution cycle is weekly, then your cleanup cycle should also occur weekly.
If everything is working properly, the creation of change pointers is turned on, the creation of change pointer records is conditioned by message type and data table-fields, RBDMIDOC is running in a scheduled periodic batch job to distribute the master data changes via IDOCs and mark the change pointer records as ‘processed’, and RBDCPCLR is running in a scheduled periodic batch job to clean up the ‘processed’ change pointer records.
What, then, would cause runaway growth in the change pointer tables?
In my next two posts, I will review several methods I use to identify sources of runaway growth in the change pointer record tables.
