Poor BI Performance hurts Portal Part - II

consider troubleshooting a Portal system downtime and you are unable to bring up the server ,you can log on to NWA and try to access the java system reports and notice the user activities or the slowest response time objects. you might find that one of the sever processes in yor instance , central instance or the dialog instance may be doing a garbage collection and using up all resources to bring up the server to function correctly.the system can be so slow that if you are running on a web dispatacher within the LAN, you could time out or the application could ( /irj ) time out due to a long delay in response from the server process. the next place to go is the visual administration tool which can tell you the costly object which is killing the server.on the portal, several systems that are connected to it may cause the system to come down. for example if a BI system is conneceted to the portal and if you run a scheduled report using BEx Broadcaster you can turn on a background job in BI and if the job fails for some reason you could end up with the background work process in BI running forever and this could potentially eat up resources in AS JAVA and hence bring the system down. hence, Portal need not be the one stop to identify bottlenecks. the interfaces play a huge role in its activities which goes back to the definition of Portal: an interface or one stop to access everything by using connectors to communicate with the interfaced systems.
this is the second part of the series. read the first one here

Portal Anonymous User Concept

I guarantee, that you can have the named anonymous users defined correctly based on the explanation given below:
I have done this too many times on several SPS levels and this concept has its own history.....so trust me on the below tips...


The concept of named anonymous user has always been a topic of discussion in the forums...here are some tips on this topic

READ ON....

SAP Web Dispatcher and Enterprise Portal SSL (Part - II)

This is the second part of the series...read the first part published on Nov 9th 2008

SAP Web Dispatcher and Enterprise Portal(Part - I)

Here is a detailed description of configuring SSL on Enterprise Portal

READ MORE

SAP Portal Hotline !

"The best learning comes from collaboration"

The above statement has always been my motto for a long time and this time I am taking it one step higher !

We as SAP professionals need to collaborate for faster solutions. Currently we have Blogs, Forums, Emails, Podcasts, E-learning, Articles, Chat messages and lately Google Wave…the list goes on.
Sometimes we only wish we can talk to the other person and be more expressive about our work…….

The day has come and I am going to introduce for the first time (I was told), the first ever SAP PORTAL HOTLINE!

Google Voice has revolutionized the art of collaborating by allowing us to have a conversation with our fellow experts and hopefully inspire more people to get hooked on to Google Voice and place the Widget on their BlogSpot and call each other if there is a CRISIS during production support or handle a crazy project manager trying to kill you to resolve a technical issue in SAP or in general have a meaningful conversation!

If you have a question regarding SAP Portal click on the Call Me button under the title SAP Portal Hotline and leave a message regarding your question and if you are one of those folks living in the US of A, I can get back to you with a phone call if you leave your phone number in the message. I could have taken calls but I can only imagine my phone ringing all the time. Hence I will start with “Leave a Message” and soon open my phone to ring……here is my Google Voice Number: (201) 357-0516
(Remember to use your headset on your computer to leave a message)

Internet Explorer 8 : NOT SUITED for SAP PORTAL

I have mentioned this a million times and I will repeat it again.....MOVE ON !

Internet explorer is a primitive tool, learn to accept change, accept new browsers especially CHROME ! sometimes i think of staging a protest until SAP realizes the idea of change and move on with something more faster than Internet Explorer...below is some research on how internet explorer SUCKS !

Read more....

service.sap.com/PAM explains the support of IE8 on SAP Portal...here is a picture

Portal Landscape Question

Lately I've been getting a lot of emails on questions regarding Portal Landscape concepts and i felt i should share it with you readers ...below is one of those questions and my reply:

Hi Rahul,
I have been reading through your blog on The Cloak and Dagger about Portal and BI Connectivity.We are on SAP NW 7.0(SR1)-BI 7.0 usage types ABAP+Java. We are planning to go for EP with BI Environment. As of now we have three options in our Current scenario.
1) Building EP on the existing environment (ABAP+JAVA).
2) Fresh installation of EP which requires additional hardware.
3) We are alredy using EP for ESS, can we integrate the existing EP (ESS) with BI.
Currently our BI Portal internal portal is running on BSP+WEB Dispatcher+ICM functionality.Please suggest on how to go forward with the scenario's above. Also, suggest the major advantages of integrating EP with BI.


Read the Response

DO NOT HACK your SAP system : SE16N threats

(WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS IN YOUR PRODUCTION SYSTEM)
Follow these simple steps to hack SAP.

1. Execute tcode SE16N.
2. Type &SAP_EDIT into the command field and press enter.
3. Enter any standard SAP table: VBAK for example and hit F8.
4. You can now edit and change data in the table and you can also delete rows and columns.
Ok, now you know that you can always catch that culprit and put him in a sack and bury him in the backyard for doing this insane HACK! Guess what.....The changes that are made using this command prompt WILL NOT BE STORED IN THE CHANGE DOCUMENT TABLES: SE16N_CD_KEY: Change Documents – Header and SE16N_CD_DATA : Change Documents – Data
But wait a second………………HELLO! what’s the point when he/she has already screwed your database and consider this guy is pissed off with the management for some reason and wants to screw the company and implements this simple HACK …….TOO LATE buddy !

How about that SAP ???

So my dear blog fans, immediately tell the folks in your company to remove this t-code (SE16N) access in the production system ….use SE16 instead!!

Ways to control this situation and RISK factors ....CLICK HERE

SAP Business Objects Explorer

This is definitely the first blog which is drifting away from SAP portal but this is the future web application for analyzing data ! SAP BEx could not do this with such ease ...now we know why they merged with BO...read all about it here SAP Business Objects Explorer

and check this out fellas ...i used an excel file in the instructions mentioned in this link BUSINESS OBJECTS EXPLORER and i could not believe this !!!

EXAMPLE BUSINESS OBJECTS EXPLORER

also check this article on BO Explorer i found in SDN

Twitter !

Welcome to the world of Twitter on SAP NW Portal. please follow us on some useful tips and tricks which will help us collaborate better..

http://twitter.com/SAPNWPortal

New Design!!!

Hello folks..

The old template started to look like an ancient website built in 1999 and hence I have a new template. with new features from "blogger" make use of the comments section and the new Polls ! hope you guys like the new design.

System Users Created during a NW (Portal) installation

SAPinst creates the following users during the installation process :

SIDadm : This ID is used to logon to the physical server which connects to the Instance that is being
installed which inturn connects to the ABAP/JAVA schema. This ID is also used for administrating the SAP system.

SAPServiceSID : User id required to start the SAP system internally which has the local user right to log on as a service.

SAP_SID_GlobalAdmin : domain level admin group to group users at the domain level so that
the global domain and users can be placed in the right local groups.

SAP_SID_LocalAdmin : local admin group available only in the local machine. this contains the global admin group
of the domain to which the system belongs.

SAP_LocalAdmin : users in this group have full control of the usr/sap folder. SIDadm and SAPServiceSID are
members of this group.


SID: system ID.

Portal KM Repository Services

Repository services provide general functions for repositories. In a standard KM installation, certain repository services are activated by default for each repository type, whereas others can be activated explicitly if required.
Each repository service that is activated is loaded when the CM starts up, however
this initialization process results in load consumption, allocates memory and determines whether the repository service is being used and whether it is useful. You can, therefore, improve performance and reduce memory consumption by reviewing the repository services for each repository and only activating those whose functions are actually required

READ MORE......

Portal Navigation Cache Quality Check

Consider activating the cache as well as tuning the cache size
and caching time for the "ROLES" navigation connector for better performance.

Implementation: To activate the navigation cache for the "ROLES" connector, refer to the "Enabling/Disabling the Cache" section at:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/a2/19edcf16474a9798a5681ce4fe4b25/frameset.htm

Check the cache quality regularly as follows:

1. Log on to the portal with a system administrator role, choose "System Administration Navigation
Navigation Cache", and under "Navigation Connectors" choose "statistics" in the "ROLES" row.

2. Check the "hit rate" for both "Navigation Entry Points" and "Navigation Node".
If any of the hit rates is not optimal, for example much less than 100%,
choose the following link for information about adjusting the configuration of the "ROLES" navigation connector:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/a2/19edcf16474a9798a5681ce4fe4b25/frameset.htm

Background: To improve performance, the portal caches each set of navigation nodes required by a user.
If a user has access to the same navigation hierarchy as a previous user, the portal
can retrieve the navigation hierarchy from the cache instead of generating it again.

Single Sign On: “The Wizard”

The wizard is a useful tool to analyze single-sign-on problems.Thanks to webdynpro, SAP is constantly building these applications which help us troubleshoot issues faster. The wizard is integrated in NWA if your SPS level is over 14 with 7.0

http://..com/logon/logonServlet?redirectURL=/webdynpro/dispatcher/sap.com/tc~sec~auth~sso2~wizard/SSO2Wizard

There are some good notes from service marketplace.....
1257108: this note has a collective set of info for SSO.
1055856: Learn from error – general mistakes when SSO is set up.
701205: Single Sign-On using SAP Logon Tickets

SAP Portal Favorites

One of the common issues in SDN is Portal favorites !
when a user decides to use the favorites option he wants to use it on a daily basis.....what goes into building this Favorites concept ??? Read more....

SAP Portal Performance –II (Browser Cache)

This is an extension from my previous blog on Portal Performance and in this blog i have a small tip to share which will improve the performance of the Portal. There are 2 things you might want to consider to save some space in your hard disk.

Close the Browser: the browser cache gets deleted only if you set the “empty temporary internet files when browser is closed” option under the advanced tab selected as shown in fig 2. I recommend adding this in your company's group policy so the end users have no choice in deselecting that option.

Delete Temporary Internet Files manually: If you don’t want to close the browser for some reason clear the cache manually as shown in fig 1

this small tip can definitely help increase performance !

What's my SAP Portal Version ?

3 ways to determine the Version of your Enterpise Portal System. Very often, this is the first question I ask people when they send me an email with a problem !!

1. go to system administration-> support-> version
2. http://server:port/sap/monitoring/SystemInfo
3. http://server:port/sap/monitoring/ComponentInfo

Hope that helps....

SAP Portal Single-Sign-On for Non-SAP Applications

A quick guide on SSO Configuration for non-SAP based applications.

For SSO to Java and C applications
use SAPSSOEXT- a dynamic link library for single sign on
Source: http://service.sap.com/patches (Download the SAPSSOEXT library for SAP logon ticket)

For SSO to Web apps with authentication using a HTTP header variable
use SAP Note: 442401-We server filter .

For SSO to a microsoft web-based application
use SAPSSOEXT windows server on IA32 32 bit SSO2 to Kerberos Mapping filter

SAP Portal Single Sign On

read more about SSO between BI and Portal in the below links:

SAP Diagnostics and Support Desk Tool

Graphical Description of Portal-BI connectivity

SDN blog on BI Portal SSO

Single Sign On

Single Sign On

Portal 102:

There are many articles about SSO written in SDN,help etc...and here is a collection of blogs on SSO from this blogspot...

SAP Portal System Object

Concept of Single Sign On

SSO logon Ticket theory

SSO Wizard

Checklist for Single Sign On

here is the first lesson: Portal 101

SSO wiki on SDN

KM User Photo Maintenance

Users would like to upload their photo to help the WhoisWho iView or make the CLP-collaboration launch pad more meaningful ……so here are some simple steps to follow…help the user by assigning this page in the personalization link to upload/change whenever they want…
Here is the pcd value for the self service iView:
com.sap.netweaver.coll.ChangePhotoSelfService

Click here to see more...

Portal 101

One of the first lessons to learn or to start a career in SAP Portal is here...
the building blocks for Portal is what you can learn in this blog:
Create a Folder
Create a Role
Create a Workset
Create a Page
Create an iView
Assign the role to the User

You've got to know all of the above if you plan on working on this web application ....or lets just say.... start a career in this field.......so here you go fellas...!!

Click here to start your 101 class..

lets do 102 a bit later...

SAP Portal on Facebook !

Folks...here is a good community specific to PORTAL !!

access this link to join the group..
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9583336428

Portal Certification Questions - I

I found the first list of portal questions.. hope that helps!

CLICK Here to read more....