Technology Blogs by SAP
Learn how to extend and personalize SAP applications. Follow the SAP technology blog for insights into SAP BTP, ABAP, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP HANA, and more.
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

You surely know this problem, you are executing some important job which is writing interesting information in some spool file and/or an application log file. At the end of an hour-long processing you would like to understanding if the complete job processing was successful or not. What can you do? Scroll through 50 pages of spool file?! Find the right application log via transaction SLG1 which is often very difficult if similar processing took place in parallel during the same time frame?! Anyway it is quite cumbersome and tedious to find a handful exceptions raised by the background job while there might be thousands of successfully processed items.

This blog describes what can be done in order to link application log information with the corresponding background job and how it is possible to navigate from the background job to the respective log file(s).

Technical prerequsisite

As a minimum requirement your respective SAP backend system needs to run on SAP Basis 7.00 or higher. Then you can either implement SAP note 1706526 "BAL_DB_SAVE: save Loghandle also in Batch Context Table" (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1706526) or you might have the right support package level. The SAP note is valid for

Software Component          Release                             Package name

SAP_BASIS                             700                         SAPKB70015 - SAPKB70026

SAP_BASIS                             701                         SAPKB70101 - SAPKB70111

SAP_BASIS                             702                         SAPKB70201 - SAPKB70211

SAP_BASIS                             710                         SAPKB71003 - SAPKB71014

SAP_BASIS                             711                         SAPKB71102 - SAPKB71109

SAP_BASIS                             720                         SAPKB72002 - SAPKB72007

SAP_BASIS                             730                         SAPKB73001 - SAPKB73007

SAP_BASIS                             731                         SAPKB73101 - SAPKB73103

Configure the linkage

You have to configure the Criteria Manager which was already mentioned in previous blogs( http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2009/07/18/job-interception-con... and http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2010/05/08/re-directing-transac...). So you call transaction CRIT or report CRITERIA_MANAGER and navigate to tab strip Criteria Types. There you click on 'Add' and define new criteria type as follows:

Type definition:

     Criterion Type: APPLOG

     Description:    Auto-linking Applog-Handles for jobs

Field definition:

     Field     Description

     CLIENT    Client

     JOBNAME    Job name

     USER    User

Click on 'Create' or press 'Enter'.

After creating the new Criteria Type you switch to tab strip Criteria Profiles tab and add a new Criteria Profile of type "Auto-linking Applog-Handles for jobs". For this type: Add a new criterion specifying for which jobs/client/user combination the Auto-linking Applog-Handles should be activated. The selection in the screenshot below means, that every job created by any user will link its application log information (if a log is written at all).

Activate the newly created profile.

After the activation every job that fits to your given criteria will write its log handle information in table TBTCCNTXT with reference type BTC_APPLOG_HANDLE. In order to be able to transport your configuration you have to apply SAP note 1709298 "Criteria Manager: No transport link for criteria types"

(https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1709298).

Navigating from background job to Application Log file(s)

So what's the benefit once your background jobs are linked to the corresponding log file? If you naviagte into transaction SM37 and see the list of background jobs that interest you, then you can select one of those jobs and via the menu Goto > Application Log you can directly access the corresponding Application Log file(s).

In our case you can see that the job has actually written more than one file. Within the application log you can then filter out green and/or yellow messages and only focus on red ones for further analysis.

So with this linkage it becomes much fater and simpler to find out application related error messages that were raised during background processing. You will see that several new SAP APO related key figures (developed for Business Process Analytics and Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager) will make use of this linkage. The upcoming ST-A/PI 01Q* will contain several new exception key figures related to the most typical DP, SNP and PP/DS jobs (see New keyfigures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions from APO planning runs).

.

Further reading

Frequently Asked Questions about Job Scheduling Management are answered at http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Job+Scheduling+Management

Related previous blogs:

Frequently Asked Questions about Business Process Monitoring and Business Process Analytics are answered at http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Monitoring and

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Analytics respectively.

The following blogs (in chronological order) provide further details about Business Process Analytics and Monitoring functionalities within the SAP Solution Manager.

8 Comments