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troy_cronin2
Active Contributor

Backdrop: Errors present us (user bases) with a wide range of functional issues which can pose threats in terms of loss of functionality, operational performance, application setups and everyday work processes.

While operating through a NW (Netweaver) Java Application Server environment error exceptions can occur on occasion for a whole hos of different reasons and pinpointing the root source of such occurrences is the key to their subsequent resolution and future prevention.

Tracing: If you have experience with the Enterprise Portal and have encountered an issue in the past you will most likely be familiar with being requested to gather, obtain and collect trace info (Information) for a Knowledge Management (KM) WebDAV or a Portal Drive Scenario.

Tracing is not restricted only to KM, WebDAV or Portal Drive.

Tracing can be used across the entire Portal to view underlying system operations and error exceptions

  • KM:Through the KM functional unit, SAP NetWeaver provides a central, role-specific point of entry to unstructured information from various data sources.
  • WebDav: Generally, access to resources (documents, folders, and links) in Content Management is performed by a WebDAV servlet.
  • Portal Drive: used in the assignment of KM folders to Windows drive letters

KM, WebDAV, Portal Drive - Tracing Relations

In order to troubleshoot issues accessing KM Content via WebDAV it is necessary to gather debug tracing on the engine as well as getting a HTTP trace of the scenario involved. This will show the requests and responses that are sent to the WebDAV server in order to determine where the issue occurs. You can gather both traces simultaneously. It is important that this additional tracing is only carried out when you are reproducing the issue to avoid any performance problems.

Increasing Trace Levels

  1. Open the Visual Administrator tool
  2. Navigate to Services -> Log Configurator -> Locations
  3. Switch to Advanced Mode
  4. Navigate to com -> sapportals -> wcm -> protocol -> webdav -> server.
  5. Follow the same procedure for the following locations:
    • com.sapportals.wcm.protocol.webdav.server.WDServlet
    • com.sapportals.wcm.protocol.webdav.server.WDGetHandler
    • com.sapportals.wcm.protocol.webdav.server.WDPutHandler
    • com.sapportals.wcm.protocol.webdav.server.WDCopyHandler
    • com.sapportals.wcm.protocol.webdav.server.WDDeleteHandler
  6. If a location doesn't already exist you need to add a new controller by selecting 'New' at the bottom of the screen
  7. Type in the name of the new controller, e.g. com.sapportals.wcm.protocol.webdav.server.WDGetHandler
  8. After you have added the above locations with severity 'All', save your changes making sure you apply them to the relevant server(s)
  9. Set the severity of WDServlet to 'All'
  10. Reproduce the issue accessing a resource via WebDAV or Portal Drive 
    • Attach the resulting defaultTrace.X.trc file to your customer Incident which can be found at
      \usr\sap\<SID>\<instance_name>\j2ee\cluster\server\log
  11. Remember to reset the trace locations back to their original severity in order to avoid any performance issues

HTTP Trace


  1. Clear the cache from your web browser
  2. Open the Visual Administrator tool
  3. Navigate to the HTTP Provider of the Dispatcher opening the Properties tab
  4. Set the HttpTrace property to 'enable'
  5. Set the HttpTraceTime property to 'true'
  6. Reproduce the issue accessing a resource via WebDAV or Portal Drive 
  7. When you have finished you should disable the HTTP tracing again, i.e. set the HttpTrace property to 'disable' and set the HttpTraceTime property to 'false' .
  8. Attach the resulting req-resp.trc file to your customer Incident which can be found at
    \usr\sap\<SID>\<instance_name>\j2ee\cluster\dispatcher\log\services\http\req-resp.trc

Important

It is important when reproducing the issue that you take note of the KM resource that is being accessed as well as the time you reproduced the issue, you should include this information in your customer Incident.