Month: August 2022

Humor

New input welcome, leave a comment!

What does the SAP abbreviation stand for?

  • SAP = Slow And Painful
  • SAP = Software Aus Pakistan
  • SAP = Shut up And Pay
  • SAP = Sanduhr Anschau Program
  • SAP = Schreibs Auf Papier
  • SAP = Suffer After Purchase
  • SAP = System against People
  • SAP = Start Applying Patches
  • SAP = Surrender and Pay
  • SAP = Sit and Panic
  • SAP = Severely Aged Programs
  • SAP = Submit (security bugs) and Pray
  • SAP = Sammelbecken Arbeitsloser Physiker -> German for Pool of Unemployed Physicists

Competence

Competence is limited, incompetence is unlimited
Below each level of incompetence there a next level of even worse incompetence
We don't need to remove the BigTruck button in STMS since nobody will be so stupid to start the ImportAll
Fundamental laws of stupidity:
1. Everybody underestimates the amount of stupid people
2. Stupidity is not related to any other characteristic of a person 
3. Stupid people damage others and themselves
4. Not-stupid people underestimate the damage of stupid people
5. Stupid people are more dangerous than smart criminals

Checking 3rd party tools and integration

A lot of 3rd party tools exist. A lot of them are good. Some are really not that good.

SAP partner site

Start on the SAP partner site. Now go to the section for certified solution and hardware:

Now search or select a third party solution. In this example Onapsis:

You can see the scope of the product for which it is certified and for which version.

The certificate itself contains more detailed information:

You see the functions, the version for which it was tested and till what date the certificate is valid.

What to check from 3rd party?

Checkpoint for 3rd party solution:

  • SAP certified? Not all 3rd party software is certified. Check it as explained above.
  • S4HANA compliant? Not al 3rd party software is S4HANA compliant and certified. This can give issues when you have to run S4HANA conversion in the future.
  • Check scope of solution
  • Check till what date the solution is certified

Caveat emptor

If a solution is not SAP certified, it does not mean it is bad. If a solution is SAP certified it does not mean it is good and meeting all of your requirements.

Caveat emptor: know what you buy.

The SAP certification ensures some checkpoints. In your company requirements might be higher than tested and checked by SAP certification.

The SAP checkpoints are mostly on installation and de-installation. And do not always cover security elements!

Transaction variant

This blog will explain how to create a transaction variant.

It will also give a list of how-to OSS notes that might help you for your situation.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How to set up a transaction variant?
  • Where can I find the restrictions for transaction variants?
  • Where can I find how-to instructions for transaction variants?

Set up transaction variant

As example we will use SU3 transaction to maintain own user data. On the screen there is also a password reset button we want to remove:

To set up a transaction variant start transaction SHD0:

Enter in transaction code SU3 and in the variant name the Z name of the variant you want to create. Now hit the create button. Execute the transaction and go back to the popup screen. On the popup screen change the menu options and toggle the button to invisible:

The transaction variant is now created:

To assign a transaction code, don’t go to transaction SE93, but stay in the SHD0 transaction and select the menu option Goto / Create Variant Transaction:

Assign a ZSU3 as transaction code. Save the variant transaction and test it by entering the new ZSU3 transaction code:

The password reset button is gone in this variant.

SAP references

SAP blog on transaction variant: link.

SAP help file on transaction variant: link.
Restriction OSS note: 331360 – Transaction variants are not always possible.

OSS notes

How-to OSS notes:

Analysis of SYS_LOB* tables

When you are trying to manage your database size, you might see large SYS_LOB* tables on Oracle based systems.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • How can I find large SYS_LOB tables in my Oracle based SAP system?
  • How can I find the real table for the SYS_LOB?

Finding SYS_LOB table size

In DB02 select all segments larger than 1 GB with name SYS_LOB*:

Output might be like this:

On the tab Lobs you can see the table:

From SYS_LOB name to table

Next to the direct view in DB02 as shown above, OSS note 2142497 – What to do for large lobsegment on Oracle database? describes several ways of determining the translation from the SYS_LOB label to the real table.

You can use ST04 SQL query and fire this query: replace the SYS_LOB number from the one in your own system:

SELECT OWNER, TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME FROM DBA_LOBS
WHERE 'SYS_LOB0007061918C00006$$' IN (SEGMENT_NAME, INDEX_NAME);

Or in ST04, you launch the DBA view for DBA_LOBS:

Result:

In this case table DMC_INDXCL is the source of the SYS_LOB. Knowing this it will easily lead you to OSS note 2704146 – How to delete data in DMC_INDXCL? – SLT for clean up.

Frequent SYS_LOB tables

Frequent SYS_LOB tables and solutions: