Month: March 2021

Technical clean up for Solution Manager

This blog will focus on technical clean up for SAP solution manager.

Questions that will be answered are:

  • How can I reduce size of fast growing tables in SAP solution manager?
  • Which functions of SAP solution manager are in use or were in use?

SAP Readiness check for Cloud ALM

SAP Cloud ALM will replace SAP solution manager. You can run the SAP Readiness check for Cloud ALM to determine which functions of solution manager you use or were in use in the past.

Technical clean up general

SAP solution manager is a netweaver system which also used BI functions. For the general tables read the Technical clean up blog and for the BI parts, the BI clean up blog.

Solution manager specific clean up

A good starting point for clean up is OSS note 2549260 – Certain tables in Solution Manager system grow fast. This covers the most common use cases.

Special use cases are list below.

BI clean up

For BI specific clean up of solution manager, read OSS note2053261 – Solution Manager: HANA Database Cubes are not reorganized.

Custom code management clean up

Check OSS note 2790429 – Custom Code Management: Deletion Report for SP05 and higher. Then run program RAGS_CC_DATA_DELETION.

LMDB clean up

Table LMDB_P_CHANGELOG can grow very large. Note 1695927 – Cleaning up the change history in the LMDB explains to run program RLMDB_CLEAR_CHANGELOG for clean up.

CUP data

If table CUP_USAGE_DATA grows fast, follow the instructions from OSS note 2150720 – CUP enabled by default with automated cleanup process for outdated statistics.

E2E diagnostics data

If table SMD_HASH_TABLE is growing fast, check OSS note 1480588 – ST: E2E Diagnostics – BI Housekeeping – Information to clean up the data.

Technical monitoring data

If you are using Solution manager to do technical monitoring, the instructions for data reduction are listed in this OSS note: 2345041 – How to Reduce and Maintain Table Growth in Technical Monitoring for Solution Manger 7.1 & 7.2.

If you set up the monitoring in the past, but are not using it, best to switch it off. If you are actively using it, consider moving it to SAP Focused Run, which is far superior. More on Focused Run in this blog series.

Large SWJ_CONT table

If table SWJ_CONT is growing, you can run program RSPPF_SWJCLEAN for clean up. See note 1890845 – Removal of unnecessary entries from SWJ_CONT.

Technical clean up for BI

SAP BI can be used in BI itself, but BI is more available than you think: embedded BI in S4HANA, inside SCM, inside SAP solution manager, etc.

Also for BI systems a technical clean up of data might be required when the data volume becomes too high. For other clean up read this blog on technical clean up.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How can I do a housekeeping on my BI system using a task list?
  • How can I execute a technical clean up of old BI technical data?

BI housekeeping task list

Go to transaction STC01 and start the SAP_BW_HOUSEKEEPING task list. Select all cleanups you want to perform. Select in the variants the retention times and dates. When done, start the task list (best to do in background mode):

When done all should be green.

Reference OSS note for this task list explaining all details steps: 1829728 – BW Housekeeping Task List.

Bug fix note for BI on HANA: 3016692 – SAP_BW_HOUSEKEEPING Tasklist issue of RSO_PSA_PARTITION_CHECK ended in checkmode.

Clean up RSDDSTATDTP

For table RSDDSTATDTP, you can use clean up program RSDDSTAT_DATA_DELETE (transaction RSDDSTAT):

Background OSS note: 2971233 – RSDDSTAT_DATA_DELETE: “free date selection” vs. “all”.

Other notes:

Clean up RSBATCHDATA and RSBATCHCTRL

For Clean up of tables RSBATCHDATA and RSBATCHCTRL, you can use program RSBATCH_DEL_MSG_PARM_DTPTEMP (transaction RSBATCH):

Parameters: DEL_MSG to delete all records older than XXX (From 000 to 999) days (M-Records). DEL_PAR to delete all records older than XXX (From 000 to 999) days (R and P-Records). DEL_DTP has no meaning.

Background: OSS note 1942703 – RSBATCH_DEL_MSG_PARM_DTPTEMP does not delete all expected RSBATCH* entries.

Other OSS notes:

Clean up of RSPM tables

Request administrations is stored in tables starting with RSPM. After years clean up will be needed for these tables to avoid them from growing. Main OSS note 3137171 – [BW Central KBA] Housekeeping for Request Administration tables (RSPM* tables) describes the process and programs.

SE95 modification overview

Transaction SE95 can be used to get an overview of modifications in your SAP system.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • What is the definition of a modification?
  • How can I list all modifications in my system?
  • How can I make a download of all the modifications in my system?
  • How can I filter on real modifications and exclude the modifications caused by OSS notes?

Definition of modifications

This is the most tricky question: how many modifications are in your system? A question that will be asked to you every now and then. The answer can very between a very small number and a very large number. Even with the same system. This is because the way SAP is measuring modifications. OSS notes applied count as modifications. Classical user exits like MV45AFZF also count as modifications. Condition records (VOFM routines starting with RV) also count as modifications. But you can still consider the system as 100% standard.

Real modifications are only those where the customer willingly changed the SAP coding and its functionality, which is not based on an instructions from an OSS note.

In many cases with discussion on system quality, the number of modifications is misused! Be careful to check how your analysis figures will be used.

Modification browser

Start transaction SE95 to reach the modification browser initial screen:

You can now see the SE95 result list:

You can drill down based on the objects.

For a view per package, check the Packages display option on the first screen:

Listing for download

SE95 has a major setback: the list is very hard to export. The modifications are stored in database view SMODIDEVC (which is a view on SMODILOG and TADIR).

From here do select only the MOD (modifcations):

The resulting output list can be easily downloaded into an excel format.

SE95 OSS notes

2971944 – Resetting program modifications in SE95 also resets SAP Note corrections

FIORI in app extensibility

The new generation of standard SAP FIORI apps can be easily be modified in layout and small extensions. This is called FIORI in app extensibility.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How can I easily change the layout of a standard SAP FIORI app?
  • How can I hide fields or rename labels of a standard SAP FIORI app?
  • How can I extend a standard SAP FIORI app with a custom field?
  • Where can I find more background information on all possibilities for in app extension?
  • How do I technically enable in app extensibility?
  • How to enable in app extensibility transports?

Technical enabling of in app extensibility

Activate this SICF node: /default_host/sap/bc/lrep.

And assign authorization role SAP_UI_FLEX_KEY_USER to your user. Without the role, you will not get the needed menu item.

Cosmetic UI changes

We will use the app manage purchase requisitions as example. Go into the app and select a purchase requisition. At the point in time we want to make changes, we go to the Adapt UI menu option in the personal menu:

The Adapt UI screen will now open:

For example we will remove the block Batch. Select is and push the minus button to remove:

We do the same with Material supplier number.

And we want to change the location of the Desired vendor element: we use drag and drop to move it.

And we want to change the label Plant into the word Factory:

When we are done we publish the changes by hitting the Publish button:

Upon publishing the system will ask for a transport number to store the changes.

Best practice is to do the changes on development system and transport them (for the setup see below). Do not maintain UI changes directly on production.

Adding fields to the UI

We also want to add a new field to the UI. Select the block where you want to add a field and select the + symbol:

You can now add a field from the existing filed from the available business context:

Press Ok to add it.

If you want a new field, click on the + icon in the available fields. You are now redirected to the custom fields app:

Select the Plus icon now to create a new field:

As example we create a checkbox with title “Rush indicator”.

Choose Create and Publish. On the custom fields page, enable it for the correct apps:

Publish the changes.

Before you can use the field: please reload the app you were extending (server and UI definitions are out of sync).

Now go back into UI adaption mode and you are able to select the new field:

You can Publish now. New field is available for now for the users.

Data storage

In case you were wondering where this data field is stored: it is stored in the S4HANA database.

In SE11 for table EBAN (purchase requisitions), you can see a new extend with the new field:

For different objects different tables are present. You need functional/technical SAP background knowledge to know the exact table.

Setting up the transport mechanism

To set up the transport mechanism for in app extensibility read this dedicated blog.

In short: transaction S_ATO_SETUP:

Set you packages and setup. Then activate and use the FIORI apps for transporting key user adaptation content.

Background references

References:

  • SAP wiki on FIORI in app extensibility
  • SAP presentation on FIORI in app extensibility
  • SAP help on in app extensibility for making simple UI changes
  • SAP help on custom fields and logic
  • Example blog on extending customer master FIORI app