SAIS_MONI: Generic audit report about system changes

SAIS_MONI is a central audit report about system changes. It collect changes from client opening, audit log, change log, transport log and more, in one central place.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How to install the SAIS_MONI tool?
  • How to run the SAIS_MONI tool?

How to install the SAIS_MONI tool?

The SAIS_MONI tool is installed via OSS note 2423576 – SAIS | Generic audit report about system changes. Or it is standard as of the basis support package stated in this note.

Bug fix notes:

How to run the SAIS_MONI tool?

You start the tool with transaction SAIS_MONI:

Depending on your input the output will be shown as ALV output.

For a full description of each option, read OSS note 2915635 – SAIS | Generic audit report about system changes.

Logging for users is described in OSS note 139418 – Logging of user actions (ABAP server).

Bug fix OSS notes

Bug fix notes:

Content server migration of documents

If you have configured attachments of document info records to be stored in the content server, you still might have a lot of old document stored into the SAP database.

This blog will explain how to migrate these documents from the database to the content server.

Questions that will be answered are:

  • How to migrate documents from database to content server?
  • What are relevant background OSS notes?

Running the migration

The main OSS note is 389366 – Relocation of documents. This basically tells you to run program RSIRPIRL. The exact use is explained in OSS note 2459712 – How to use report RSIRPIRL.

To run start transaction SE38 and start program RSIRPIRL and fill out the required data:

Select a time frame that has little documents in a test environment first. Check how long it takes and that it ends correctly. After the relocation is done you get a list of technical ID’s migrated. When confident in a test environment, run in production environment, and monitor the storage of the content server (so it does not fill up to 100%).

New modification note for delayed deletion: 2991944 – Introducing the Delay mode in report RSIRPIRL.

Migration of GOS objects

The program RSIRPIRL does not have many selection criteria. You might also find out that the time to migrate takes too long. If you need to migrate GOS document (global object services attachments), you can use program RSGOS_RELOCATE_ATTA:

This program migrates the GOS documents specified per type and page. GOS documents are normally the bulk of the documents. This way you can migrate most of the documents before running the full run with RSIRPIRL. Full background of program RSGOS_RELOCATE_ATTA can be found in OSS note 2293171 – RSGOS_RELOCATE_ATTA: Relocating attachments from generic object services.

Copying content repository

If you want to copy content from a content repository to another (not re-locate), install the program Z_DOC_COPY from OSS note 2774469 – Program to copy SAP content repositories.

Relevant OSS notes

OSS notes:

APC: Abap push channel

The ABAP push channel (APC) is the ABAP implementation of websockets. It’s goal is to enable the ABAP stack to send push messages to registered web clients.

This blog will answer the following questions:

  • How to setup an ABAP push channel?
  • How to implement the ABAP push channel?
  • How to test the ABAP push channel?
  • Where to find more background and examples on ABAP push channel?

Setting up an ABAP push channel

To setup an ABAP push channel go to transaction SE80 and right click, select create / connectivity / ABAP push channel notification.

Now press the Generate Class and Service button. The classes and services will now be generated as placeholders. Save your work.

If you try to activate the service at this point in time you get this error message:

The reason is that we didn’t implement two methods of the new class yet: the ON_START and ON_MESSAGE.

Implementing the actual APC class

To do this, we go to SE24 and lookup the generated class and we select the ON_START method:

Press the redefine button to redefine the method.

Use this code in the method:

TRY.
* send the message on WebSocket connection
DATA(lo_message) = i_message_manager->create_message( ).        lo_message->set_text( |ON_START has been successfully executed !| ).
i_message_manager->send( lo_message ).
CATCH cx_apc_error INTO DATA(lx_apc_error).
MESSAGE lx_apc_error->get_text( ) TYPE 'E'.
ENDTRY.

This basically confirms the push channel registration.

Now redefine the ON_MESSAGE method:

TRY.
* create the message object
DATA(lo_message) = i_message_manager->create_message( ).
* send message
lo_message->set_text( |Hello World !| ).
i_message_manager->send( lo_message ).
CATCH cx_apc_error INTO DATA(lx_apc_error).
MESSAGE lx_apc_error->get_text( ) TYPE 'E'.
ENDTRY.

It simply pushes the message: ‘Hello World’.

Save and generate the class in SE24.

Now we can go back to the SE80 ABAP push channel we have created and activate it as well. You can run the consistency check to see all is fine:

Testing the ABAP push channel

Now you can test the ABAP push channel by hitting the test button in the SE80 screen of the ABAP push channel. The test service will launch an ABAP webdynpro screen.

If the ABAP webdynpro screen does not launch, activate in SCIF transaction the following 2 nodes: WDR_TEST_APC and WDR_TEST_APC_WSP.

Test result:

As an alternative to SE80 you can also use transaction SAPC:

Background information

Excellent blogs on ABAP push channels are:

Chat bots via SAP conversational AI

This blog will explain how simple you can set up a chat bot via SAP conversational AI.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How can I set up a test chat bot with SAP conversational AI?
  • How can I test the chat bot?

Setting up the chat bot

SAP conversational AI is the technology behind the chat bots of SAP. It only runs in the cloud. It does not run on premise.

You can register for a free test account at https://cai.tools.sap/.

After registration you can create your first bot:

Here we choose Perform Actions and press the CREATE A BOT button:

Continue with the wizard:

Now create the bot.

First thing to add is an intent:

And enter the detailed words (expressions) for the intent:

When the user keys in one of these words, it will trigger the bot.

But this is only the trigger. There is no action yet. Goto the build tab and create a skill first:

Now open the skill. In the skill you can goto the details to add a trigger:

Here we use our test intent we created before as trigger.

Now goto the Actions tab and create the wanted action:

In our simple case, we respond back with a text saying “Me too!”.

Testing the chat bot

Now we will test our chat bot. Test result:

First thing we say is “tell a joke”. Then the bot will tell a joke.

Then we ask: I need a holiday. Since we have set the word “holiday” as an intent, the bot responds with the action and says “Me too!”. The same for I need beer. Any response question that is not in the chat bot script it goes to fallback.

OpenSAP course

SAP has a nice OpenSAP training on chatbot building. Follow this link.

Data archiving: reducing amount of parallel batch jobs

When executing data archiving you have to be acting careful. The data archiving write and delete processes can be consuming a lot of CPU power from the database. Also, if you are not careful you might, by accident, claim all background processes. This blog will explain how to limit the amount of batch jobs used for data archiving. The data archiving run process itself is described in this blog.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How can I limit the amount of deletion jobs?
  • How can I restrict the archiving jobs to run on a specific application server only?

Limit amount of deletion jobs

When the write run of data archiving is finished, this can have delivered many files. If you are not careful with the deletion, you select all files and each file will start a deletion run. This will consume a lot of CPU power on database level, since the deletion run will fire many DELETE statements to the database in rapid sequence. Also you might consume all batch jobs, leaving no room for any business batch job.

In stead of running the deletion from SARA, you can also run the deletion via program RSARCHD:

With this example, MM_EKKO files will be deleted. Maximum of 50 files from 1 archiving run will be processed, with a maximum of 2 deletion batch jobs running at the same time.

The general OSS note for this program is 133707 – Data archiving outside transaction SARA.

Relevant OSS notes bug fix notes:

General application server restrictions via batch job server group

In SM61 you can setup a special batch job server group. Here can assign a single application server for you data archiving batch job processing. We assume here you created a group called DATA_ARCH.

In SARA you can now goto the general data archiving settings:

Now you can link the batch job server group:

With the button JobClasses you can specify the job priorities per data archiving function:

A = high priority, C = low priority. The above screen shot is an example.

The second part of OSS note 2269004 – How to reduce parallel archiving jobs on Integration Engine describes the procedure as well. The first part of the note is only relevant for SAP PI.