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Deep Dive into SAP Build Process Automation with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition - Retail

2024-03-28T14:19:12.526000+01:00

This blog is intended to complement my previous blogs on automation and augment Retail scenario with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition as described with available scope items for Retail and SAP Help documentation.

Customers are eager to take charge and explore potential avenues for innovation, aiming to streamline enterprise automation across diverse landscapes. This proactive approach empowers companies to address the challenges of disjointed processes, ensuring they focus their automation efforts where they're most needed.

A Retail company striving to revolutionize its operations, particularly in managing the intricate logistics of end-to-end retail processes. They seek to seamlessly integrate sales from both backyard distribution channels and physical storefronts, even when inventory might not be stored on-site. This pursuit of efficiency reflects their commitment to enhancing customer experience and staying ahead in a competitive market.

Let's explore a typical business situation where sales happen in stores using cash registers (POS systems). These sales involve things like selling items, customers paying for orders, and handling money transactions. To keep track of all this, we need to automatically create documents showing when goods leave the store, including steps like gathering items, putting them in packages, and officially marking them as sold and out of the store.

Real-time stock levels are monitored within SAP Customer Checkout Manager for immediate visibility. Data is moved from S/4HANA Public Cloud Retail to SAP Customer Checkout Manager, focusing on master data replication. Financial and sales transactions flow from SAP Customer Checkout Manager back to S/4HANA Public Cloud Retail. Learn more about Integration of SAP Customer Checkout Manager with S/4 Public Cloud Retail with documentation.

Executing enterprise automation with SAP Build Process Automation / SAP Integration Suite Middleware using SAP Event Mesh with business events, help trigger fully automated process. Customer can set up their custom enterprise automation bots and workflows by leveraging and extending the available best practices content on SAP Bot Store. Ex. documents for goods movements such as outbound delivery, Picking, Packing and Post Goods Issue need to be automatically accomplished. You can learn more with documentation.

SAP Event Mesh is a fully managed cloud service running on SAP BTP for enabling applications, integrations, and extensions to communicate asynchronously through events. It is part of SAP’s event driven ecosystem and powers end-to-end event driven architectures. SAP Event Mesh allows applications to communicate through asynchronous events.

Experience greater agility and scalability when you create responsive applications that work independently and participate in event-driven business processes across your business ecosystem. Learn more with SAP Help | Documentation

Currently all public business events for SAP S/4HANA Cloud listed on Business Accelerator Hub are supported and can be used to streamline the process with automation.

Customers envision to have AI-powered SAP Build Process Automation solution to integrate applications such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with their point-of-sale (POS) system, discover process inefficiencies and automate business processes.

SAP Build Process Automation provide the flexibility for the customer to automate across the enterprise to improve efficiency and reduce errors, along with Event Mesh set up. Event-Broker-as-a-Service decouples communication between event sources and event consumers in a plug-and-play fashion.

Streamline Goods Movement and Posting Billing Document
Extend pre-build Template packages to customize and perform automation using Business Events

Customer vision is to have real time business updates on significant changes in business applications for their logistics and Retail sales process, throughout their business ecosystem and increase flexibility and scalability by loosely coupling business applications and infrastructure.

Automated Goods Movement and Posting Updated Billing Document using SAP Build Process Automation

Utilizing automation through the API API_MATERIAL_DOCUMENT, the system orchestrates the creation of postings to maintain a seamless availability of articles on the storefront. Additionally, it initiates the generation of material documents following a trigger event at the Event Mesh, occurring subsequent after the creation of a point-of-sale (POS) receipt.

Within the Event Mesh framework, occurrences related to material documents are captured. These events manifest when a material document is generated (MaterialDocument.Created.v1) or when an item within a material document is canceled (MaterialDocument.Canceled.v1). Further insights into Material Document Events can be obtained for deeper understanding with SAP Help | Documentation

Furthermore, the allocation of specific delivery groups to outbound deliveries is imperative using SAP Build Process Automation BOT. This ensures that the requisite shipment resources are appropriately assigned to undertake subsequent outbound delivery tasks. The assignment of outbound delivery groups is managed externally to the cloud ERP system, documented within a spreadsheet, and synchronized with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition for updates and maintenance.

SAP Build Process Automation helps automatic creation of Picking and Packing, goods issue and monitor process using process visibility. Notification events or data events can be sent from the event source to inform of the change. Message holding the event description in an encoded format is sent through an event broker, where event consumers have registered with the event broker and are informed of the event.

SAP Build Process Automation best practices content extended to update the delivery group for outbound deliveries assignment.

SAP Build Process Automation perform automated goods movement tasks such as Picking, Packing and Goods Issue.

SAP Build Process Automation helps updating the billing document for sales for with specific attributes, Proof of Delivery, reference point-of-sale (POS) number, as well as the respective financial postings in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

For Retail business scenario, solution leverage Store Connectivity POS Outbound (3I2) to send the (Articles, B2C prices etc.) information from SAP S/4HANA Cloud system to point-of-sale (POS) system.

POS outbound service operation enables you to send product master data, sales price information, and additional information, such as purchase price information and bills of material, to point-of-sale (POS) systems. You can learn more with Documentation | SAP Help Portal and API Documentation

For Retail business inbound scenario, solution leverage POS Inbound (3HV) functionality to transfer information from POS Sales receipt and means of payment for articles available at Store front and backyard distribution channel.

In addition, configuration set up can be done to transfers aggregated sales, aggregated payment list, sales per receipt and returns, and customer order payment information by creating material and billing documents in SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

"POS Sales Transactions - Create" inbound asynchronous service to replicate POS sales transactions in SAP S/4HANA Cloud system. You can learn more with SAP Help Finance Transactions. Documentation | SAP Help Portal

POS Sales Transaction - Receive Confirmation outbound service enables you to receive a confirmation as soon as you successfully posted a POS sales transaction in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system. Documentation | SAP Help Portal

"POS Financial Transactions - Create" inbound asynchronous service enables you to replicate point-of-sale (POS) financial transactional data to SAP S/4HANA Cloud system. You can learn more with SAP Help Finance Transactions Documentation | SAP Help Portal

POS Financial Transaction - Receive Confirmation outbound service enables you to receive a SOAP confirmation as soon as you successfully posted a POS financial transaction in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Documentation | SAP Help Portal

POS Inbound (3HV) create billing Document for sales and means of payment. Billing Document Events are triggered and received by Event Mesh that informs a external system about created, changed, and canceled billing documents in an SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Event mesh will have automated execution for SAP Build process automation bot that reads the billing information via API based bot (https://api.sap.com/api/API_BILLING_DOCUMENT_SRV/overview) and send it to POS system.

In general, SAP recommend using the SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit solution which can be further evaluated in the given scenario. This solution will further optimize by having aggregated transactions (and, in specific use cases, nonaggregate (receipt-level) transactions) are periodically pushed to the back end for further processing.

Let’s take a deeper look at technical configuration steps using Event Mesh with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition with 10 simple steps that can get your event driven automation up and running.

Setup Connectivity and Extensibility

You can set up the connectivity between Event Mesh and the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Tenant that enable the exchange of credentials between the two systems. Administrator should first create an SAP S/4HANA Cloud Extensibility service instance with service plan messaging. Learn more with documentation.

Maintain Extensions on SAP BTP - To build extension applications for your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system, you need to connect your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system to your SAP Business Technology Platform global account. SAP Business Technology Platform Cockpit, open your global account and choose Systems - Add System. Learn more with Documentation | SAP Help Portal
Set Up Entitlements for Your Subaccount Documentation | SAP Help Portal
Set up your subaccount entitlement for SAP Event Mesh - Click on Configure Entitlements and then on Add Service Plan. In the Subaccount Entitlements dialog box, select the service Event Mesh. In the Service Details: Event Mesh screen area, check both options the default service plan and the Standard (Application) and then click on Add Service Plans.

Messaging to consume SAP S/4HANA Cloud events and create event-based extensions using the event bus from SAP Event Mesh and api-access for generic access to SAP S/4HANA Cloud APIs.

Navigate to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Home -> Communication Management tab and choose the tile Maintain Extensions on SAP BTP.

On the Maintain Extensions on SAP BTP screen in the Integration section, choose New.

In the Integration Token field, paste in the integration token generated and copied from the SAP Business Technology Platform. Enter a description for your system integration token and save it.

Both Services will be displayed in the list of entity assignments.

3. Navigate to your BTP subaccount and allow SAP Business Technology Platform applications to consume events and APIs from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, you need to create the relevant service instances of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Extensibility for the service plans api-access and messaging.

Inside the subaccount. Select in the left menu Services -> Instances and Subscriptions. Then Click on the button “Create”.

4. In the screen for create wizard the available Services will be displayed in the Plan dropdown list, select the service SAP S/4HANA Cloud Extensibility with plan messaging.

5. In Runtime select Cloud Foundry. Then choose the space created, for this example “dev”, then the systems linked to the BTP are displayed in the list, here choose the S4HANA Cloud to be extended “XXX”. Choose a CLI name "XXX-SBPAEvents" for your instance (e.g. XXX-SBPAEvents). And click Next.

The next screen for parameters request the Client Id with 4 chars and the system name. then click Next

6. Create a new service. Inside the subaccount. Select in the left menu Services -> Instances and Subscriptions. Then Click on the button “Create”.

7. In the Create wizard in the Service dropdown list, select the service SAP S/4HANA Cloud Extensibility. Select the Service Plan api-access, ex. "XXX-SBPAEventAPI" which you use for generic access to APIs in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud system. The communication arrangement A2X_OD_0106 is created in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition using scenario SAP_COM_0106

After the creation of the service, you can check the automatic creation of the communication arrangement in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition system. Navigate to Communication Arrangements and look for A2X_OD_0106.

8. Navigate to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition - Enterprise Event Enablement - Configure Channel Binding, Select your event channel from the list SAP_CP_XF_XXX

In the new screen, click Create over “Outbound Topic Bindings” section. Select the Topic that will be used for the event. Then you can create the topic. The topics will appear in the list.

9. Navigate to SAP BTP Tenant. Create a new service (Event Mesh).

Inside the subaccount. Select in the left menu Services -> Instances and Subscriptions. Then Click on the button “Create”.

Search for Service “Event Mesh”, Plan “default”, Run Environment “Cloud Foundry”, choose the space in Cloud Foundry, and the name for the instanceSBPAEventMesh and click , Create Event Mesh Instance

To manage the Event Mesh Instance, create a new service for Event Mesh now for Standard Plan. Inside the subaccount. Select in the left menu Services -> Instances and Subscriptions. Then Click on the button “Create”.

Search for Service “Event Mesh”, Plan “Standard” and click Next

10. Navigate to BTP Sub Account and access the Event Mesh Cockpit, you need to subscribe to SAP Event Mesh and assign several roles to your user. Go to option Security -> Roles. Now create the role ex. "Event Custom Roles".

Now your " Event Mesh" Application is ready to be executed that will capture events triggered from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition System.

You can jumpstart automation projects with hundreds process content packages available in public bot store, SAP Build Process Automation bots and connectors designed specifically to enhance the capabilities of your SAP applications.

SAP Build process automation connectors, create Actions to communicate with external systems or leverage Automation SDK providing different activities for an automation.

Stay tuned for more updates in the next quarters!

Where to Find More Information:

Watch the replays of our exclusive SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 Early Release Series here: https://community.sap.com/t5/enterprise-resource-planning-blogs-by-sap/watch-the-replays-of-our-excl...
Explore the ready-to-run cloud ERP here: https://www.sap.com/products/erp/s4hana.html
Watch our SAP S/4HANA Cloud product update videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWV533hWWvDnnyN2j-CcUheNN-GaNCb3H
Check out our digital enablement wheel here: https://chart-bdmaicr0au.dispatcher.eu2.hana.ondemand.com/index.html?hc_reset
Find out how to switch from groups to spaces and pages here: https://blogs.sap.com/2023/11/06/deactivation-of-groups-in-the-sap-fiori-launchpad-in-sap-s-4hana-cl...
Become an early adopter for Joule in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition here: https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#campaign/3612
Check out the SAP Activate Roadmap for early adopters here: https://go.support.sap.com/roadmapviewer/#/group/658F507A-D6F5-4B78-9EE1-0300C5F1E40F/roadmapOvervie...
Review the PPL content here: https://go.support.sap.com/roadmapviewer/#/group/658F507A-D6F5-4B78-9EE1-0300C5F1E40F/roadmapContent...
Listen to our podcast here: https://podcast.opensap.info/inside-sap/
Watch our openSAP microlearnings to learn about SAP S/4HANA Cloud topics at your own pace here: https://microlearning.opensap.com/
Find best practices on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition here: https://me.sap.com/processnavigator/SolS/EARL_SolS-013/latest?region=DE
Check out what’s new here: https://help.sap.com/doc/ce01d82756b947a1a043a5d5a3204226
Find help here: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_CLOUD
Read the feature scope description here: https://help.sap.com/doc/7c9e0bbbd1664c2581b2038a1c7ae4b3

SAP Table Creation, Maintenance, and Authorization

2024-04-02T01:06:55.258000+02:00

Creating Custom Tables for Table Maintenance

Go to SE11 and give the table name that you want to create.

Give the Description of the table and enter the following details.

1. Delivery Class

Delivery Class Used For

A - Application table (master and transaction data).
C -Customer table: data is maintained by the customer only
L - Table for storing temporary data
G - Customer table, SAP may insert new data records, but may not overwrite or delete existing data records. The customer namespace must be defined in table TRESC. (Use Report RDDKOR54 here).
E - System table with its own namespaces for customer entries. The customer namespace must be defined in table TRESC. (Use Report RDDKOR54 here.)
S - System table, data changes have the same status as program changes.
W - System table (e.g. table of the development environment) whose data is transported with its own transport objects (e.g. R3TR PROG, R3TR TABL, etc.).

2. Data Browser/Table View Maint.

Options Available

Display/maintenance not allowed: The usage of standard table maintenance tools is not allowed.
- Maintenance and display of this Dictionary object is not possible in transaction SE16.
- Transaction SE54 does not allow the generation of a maintenance dialog, which means automatically calling transactions SM30/SM34 for this Dictionary object is no longer possible.
Display/maintenance allowed to limited extent: Usage of standard table maintenance tools is allowed to a limited extent.
- Transaction SE16 allows the display function for this Dictionary object, but no maintenance.
- Generation of a maintenance dialog for this Dictionary object is possible using transaction SE54.
- Transaction SM30 does not allow maintenance and display functions for this Dictionary object
Display/maintenance allowed: The usage of standard table maintenance tools is allowed:
- Transaction SE16 allows the maintenance and display functions for this Dictionary object. Note: If an SM30 maintenance dialog exists for this Dictionary object, it is called.
- Transaction SE54 allows the generation of a maintenance dialog for this Dictionary object.
- Transaction SM30 allows the display and maintenance functions for this Dictionary object.

Enter the Fields of the table.

Significance of the Above fields:

LASTCHANGED: Username of the person who created or changed the data.
CHANGEDATE: The date on which the records was created or changed.
CHANGE_TIME: The time on which the records was created or changed.
COMMENTS: The reason for the changes made to be specified by the user.

Once all the fields have been entered then, click on Technical Settings and enter the following details on the next screen:

Data Class

The data class defines the physical area of the database (for ORACLE, the TABLESPACE) in which your table is logically stored. If you choose a data class correctly, your table will automatically be assigned to the correct area when it is created on the database.

The most important data classes are (other than the system data):

APPL0: Master data
APPL1: Transaction data
APPL2: Organizational and customizing data

Master data is data that is frequently read but rarely updated. Transaction data is data that is frequently updated. Organizational and customizing data is data that is defined when the system is initialized and then rarely changed.

Two more data classes are available, USR and USR1. These are reserved for user developments, and the tables assigned to these data classes are stored in a table space for user developments.

Note: The data class only has an effect on table storage for the database systems ORACLE and INFORMIX.

Size Category

The size category determines the probable space requirement for a table in the database.

You can select categories 0 to 4 for your table. Each category is assigned a specific fixed storage area value in the database. When you create a table, initial space is saved for it in the database. If more space is required later due to data that has been entered, the storage space is increased in accordance with the category selected.

Press F4 on the field size category to see the number of data records that can be maintained for the individual categories of your table without complications ensuing. These complications could be for example a reorganization becoming necessary because the maximum space to be reserved for the table was exceeded due to the maintained size category.

Buffering Status

The buffering status specifies whether or not a table may be buffered.

This depends on how the table is used, for example, on the expected volume of data in the table or on the type of access to a table (mainly read or mainly write access to the table). In the latter case, for example, one would not select buffering.

You should, therefore, select:

Buffering is not allowed if a table is not buffered.
Buffering allowed but not activated if buffering is principally allowed for a table, but at the moment no buffering should be active. The buffering type specified in this case is only a suggestion.
Buffering is allowed if the table should be buffered. In this case, a buffering type must be specified.

Buffering Type

The buffering type defines whether and how the table should be buffered.

There are the following types of buffering:

single-record buffering --> Press F1 for more details
generic area buffering --> Press F1 for more details
full buffering --> Press F1 for more details

In generic area buffering, a number of key fields between 1 and no. of key fields-1 must be specified.

No. Of Key Fields for Generic Buffers

If you read a record from a generically buffered table, all records whose left-justified part of the key corresponds to that of this record (generic key fields) are loaded into the buffer.

This left-justified part of the key is determined in this field by entering a number n of key fields. The first n key fields of the table are thus the generic key fields.

Create Authorization Object

To create an Authorization Object, go to transaction SE54.

Enter the Table/View name for which the Authorization object has to be created.

Select the Radio Button ‘Authorization groups’.

Then click on Create/Change.

Then, the next screen will give a list of Authorization Objects that are already present in the system. You can Select one of them from the available list as per the requirement. But if the table demands a new authorization object then click on New Entries pushbutton given on the screen.

Enter the new authorization object name and description as shown in the screen below. The authorization object must follow a certain naming convention. (It should always start with 'Z'.) Click on Save

Table Maintenance Generator

Go to SE12 transaction. Open the table for which the table maintenance is to be implemented.
Change it to the Editable mode and then click on Utilities -> Table maintenance generator.

Enter the following details on the next screen:

Authorization group: Assigned/created for the table by following the procedure given in Section I.
Function group: Name of the function group to which the generated maintenance modules will belong.
Maintenance type: According to the table requirement, anyone should be selected.
- One step: Only one maintenance screen is processed during extended table maintenance. The entries are displayed in list form on this screen.
- Two step: Two maintenance screens are processed during the extended table maintenance:

On the Overview screen, the entries are displayed in list form.

One entry is displayed on the single screen. For every entry, the single screen can be called from the overview screen by pressing the function key.

Maintenance Screen No

According to the maintenance type selected, an overview screen and a single screen should be entered. Recording routine—This is an indicator of the recording routine that should be used for the table contents.

Standard recording routine
No, or user, recording routine

Compare Flag

This flag indicates whether the maintenance transaction allows the (checked) activation of Business Configuration Sets (BC Sets) and the adjustment. This is the case if the maintenance transaction can run in the background. There are four options present for the compare flag:

No Information
Not Adjustable
Adjustable in Dialog
Automatically Adjustable

Once done. Click on Create.

Exceptions

If changes are made to the table after the generation of table maintenance, table maintenance should be re-generated for the table.

1. Click on Utilities -> Table Maintenance Generator.

2. Click on the Edit button. A pop-up would ask for Reason for change. Select the appropriate reasons.

3. Then, Save the data.

4. Go to System -> Status and copy the Program Name.

Changing the Source Code of Table Maintenance

If fields like last changed on, last changed by, etc., are present in the table, logic should be included to save them by the system.

1. Go to transaction SE80 and open the program that was received from the above logic.

2. Go to the Screens drop-down list and click on 0001. In the PAI event of that screen, add a module to include the logic.

3. Double-click on the module. It will ask for the ‘Include’ in which this module should be included.

4. Select the Include where we need to include the logic.

5. Enter the logic to update the table with the parameters --> person responsible for making change, timestamp, etc. It is as shown below:

6. Go to the layout of the screen

7. Once you click on the Layout button, the screen below will appear.

8. Enter the text to be displayed as the column heading in the output screen.

9. Change the attributes of the fields of the table that are required to be non-editable as 'OUTPUT ONLY', i.e., the fields LASTCHANGED, CHANGEDATE, and CHANGE_TIME. The Columns will automatically be grayed out and uneditable on the output screen.

10. Save and Activate the changes.

Create Transaction

1. To create a transaction, go to transaction SE93. Enter the transaction name which is to be created.

2. Click on Create.

3. Enter the Short text and the Start Object and select Ok.

4. Enter the below details and the Click on SAVE

5. Enter the created T-code and the below screen would appear as output.

6. Click on the New Entries button to create an entry in the table. Enter the details and then click on SAVE.

7. As soon as you click on the save button the username, Date and Time appears automatically.

8. You can check the same data in the Se16 transaction for the table.

Conclusion:

I hope I was able to give you a little insight into how the you can create, maintain and add security on a custom SAP table.

I would love to hear back suggestions, feedback and questions that you might have. Please do share the article with your Team members, Colleagues and Friends working in SAP and who use or plan to use SAP custom table to maintain critical data in SAP. Also, don’t forget to like and share the blog and follow me on SAP blogs to not miss more content: maheshsinghmony

Reference: https://dzone.com/articles/sap-table-creation-maintenance-and-authorization

Declaring Dynamic UI5 Fields in SAP Build Process Automation

2024-04-03T10:54:30.852000+02:00

While automating SAP Fiori applications, one might come across some dynamic UI5 elements such as mentioned in the snapshot below.

In most cases, recorder may not be able to uniquely identify the elements, thus terminating the automation where it may not find the suitable elements.

In such cases, SAP provides an extremely useful functionality to declare the elements manually using Design Console’s screen and tree feature.

Let us look at the steps required to fulfill the requirement.

Switch to ‘Both’ view.
In the Screen panel, click the target element.
Find the element in the ‘Tree’. (It’s recommended to find element type till the last child DIV)
Hover and right click the element and select ‘Declare Element’.

You might find that element has been uniquely identified or not, but we need to make sure that element must not use ‘id’ as an identifying criterion as it is static criteria, and we need to deal with dynamic elements.

5. Add the ‘class’ criteria from all the available criteria and remove ‘id’.

6. Now, we need to add all the parent DIVs until we find the DIV which has a criterion named ‘nth-child-tag =X’. (Here X can vary on the number of parent DIVs)

7. For this, hover to the immediate parent DIV, right click and select ‘Add to criteria’. Repeat step number 5

Once you find DIV with ‘nth-child-tag=X’ criteria, you will also find that now your element has been uniquely identified.

Element structure would look something like this.

8. Since recorder uses SAPUI5 SDK automatically, make sure you change the element class and select a SAP UI5 recorder.

9. Make sure to set the target element in automation to current declared element and you’re all set.

Hope this blog finds helpful in your automation journey.

Automating Fiori applications becomes much easier as SAP provides various SDKs to interact with Fiori elements and other platform services such as Microsoft.

But there are some important factors which needs to be considered while automating using SPA tool which includes declaring elements uniquely, adding wait functionality as required, defining similar screens uniquely etc.

In this series of blog posts, we are going to deep dive into various other important factors of this RPA tool as well.

More blogs to follow.

SAP BTP ABAP Environment – Pre-Upgrade Option for Release 2405

2024-04-03T22:09:18.140000+02:00

Overview

Providing a significant number of new features is an important goal of release upgrades to deliver innovations to our customers and partners. There are four major release upgrades per year following a predefined schedule as described in this blog post.

An upgrade is intended as a “no event” for customers and partners. For example, only compatible changes of released objects (APIs) will be delivered. We recommend performing a test of the custom-built productive apps in a test environment for the new release. The complexity of the technical dependencies between the custom-built apps and the underlying environment cannot be tested isolated, only including the ABAP environment on SAP-side. Therefore, we offer you to pre-upgrade selected systems 15 days in advance to test the applications prior to the planned standard-upgrade.

Purpose

This option enables a customer or partner to test the applications they have already developed on top of the new release a couple of days before the standard-upgrade. With SAP BTP ABAP Environment (aka "Steampunk"), we follow the approach of keeping released objects stable and provide all enhancements in a compatible fashion. Early testing is an additional measure to ensure proper software quality and might be used to detect unforeseen regressions. However, this option is not intended to test new features or to consume new features earlier.

Approach

The standard-upgrade of all systems to release 2405 is planned for May 18/19.

A customer or partner can nominate one or more already existing systems for the pre-upgrade. A nominated system will be upgraded on May 3 within a planned downtime from 8:00 to 16:00 CET.

We recommend nominating a non-development system, such as a test system. The nomination of a development system is technically also possible, but fixes or other changes must not be imported into another system with a lower release. The nomination of a productive system doesn’t make sense because the purpose of the pre-upgrade is the re-test of the existing application before the productive system gets the new release.

According to the approach explained above, this offer is only relevant for customers or partners having at least two systems.

There might be situations where a correction of custom objects needs to be deployed. Such corrections are possible if the development / correction system is on the older release and is imported into the pre-upgraded system with the higher release.

Except potential fixes, the pre-upgrade is based on the same version as the standard-upgrade.

Costs

This offering is optional and free of any additional charges.

Planned New Features

The planned new features will be published on the What's New for SAP BTP ABAP Environment on April 19. This list gives you an overview of potential areas for re-testing. The purpose of the pre-upgrade is not to consume these features before the standard-upgrade, because the documentation on help.sap.com will be delivered later before the standard-upgrade. It would also not be possible to transport code of such an adoption, because subsequent systems are not yet on the new release during the pre-upgrade phase.

Independent of the upgrades of the SAP BTP ABAP Environment, we recommend developing automated tests for the custom-built apps to detect regressions early on and without manual effort for re-testing. Such automated tests are perfectly suited to be run in the pre-upgrade test phase.

Time Schedule

The following figure summarizes the general approach:

Milestones for release 2405:

April 4: Nomination of system(s) is possible in the Landscape Portal
April 19: Announcement of the planned new features
April 29: Pre-upgrade systems are known
May 3: Pre-upgrade
May 15: Potential decision to postpone the upgrade
May 18/19: Standard-upgrade

System Nomination

To nominate a system, please register the system(s) by April 30 (EOB) latest by using the Landscape Portal. You can find further information about Accessing the Landscape Portal and about Register Systems for Pre-Upgrade. Please do not create customer tickets for system nomination like in previous pre-upgrades.

With such a nomination, the customer agrees to an extraordinary planned maintenance on May 3 (see above).

Report an Issue

Issues should be reported as part of the regression test phase by May 10 (EOB) to allow for a sufficient time frame for issue analysis and potential corrections on SAP-side.

Please create a customer ticket by using component BC-CP-ABA.

If a detected issue is likely to endanger the productive use after the standard-upgrade, you should use ticket priority very high despite the fact that the pre-upgrade system is not a productive system.

Exceptional Process in Case of Unresolved Priority Very High Issues

In case of the aligned decision on Wednesday, May 15 (based on unresolved priority very high tickets) to postpone the upgrade, a dedicated mitigation process needs to be started together with the respective customer or partner, with the following boundary conditions:

Resolving the open priority very high issues remains the highest priority for both, SAP and the customer or partner, as it is also the prerequisite for the upgrade.
According to the estimated issue resolution, catching up the upgrade needs to be planned.
The upgrade leads to a business downtime of 6 – 8 hours.
The upgrade must be scheduled within 7 calendar days the latest after fixing all remaining open priority very high issues.
We will not provide any fixes for the old release after the original date of the standard-upgrade to the new release.

In case business-critical issues are detected after the upgrade:

Issues need to be reported as priority very high issues and will be processed accordingly.
Going back to the release before upgrade is not an option. Therefore, resolving the issues in the new release with the appropriate priority is the required approach.

Summary

We recommend performing regression tests in pre-upgraded test systems to avoid day-1 impacts of productive custom apps after the standard-upgrade.

How to Create Outbound Delivery With order reference in SAP VL01N

2024-04-05T16:27:49.370000+02:00

Outbound Delivery Replication in SAP - TCODE- VL01N

1. Introduction

Outbound Delivery in SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) refers to the process of fulfilling customer orders by shipping goods or products from a company's warehouse or production facility to the customer's specified location. This documentation provides a comprehensive guide to understanding and executing Outbound Delivery processes within SAP.

2. Purpose

The purpose of Outbound Delivery in SAP is to streamline the logistics and shipping operations of a company, ensuring accurate and timely delivery of products to customers. By efficiently managing outbound deliveries, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, optimize inventory management, and improve overall operational efficiency.

3. Key Features

Creation of Outbound Delivery Orders (ODOs) based on sales orders or stock transport orders.
Packing of goods into delivery packages or handling units.
Generation of delivery documents such as delivery notes and shipping labels.
Integration with transportation management systems for route optimization and carrier selection.
Confirmation of goods issue to update inventory levels.
Monitoring and tracking of delivery status in real-time.

4. Process Flow

The typical process flow for Outbound Delivery in SAP involves the following steps:

Sales Order Creation: Customer orders are received and entered into the SAP system as sales orders.
Outbound Delivery Order Creation: Based on the sales orders, Outbound Delivery Orders (ODOs) are created in SAP. These ODOs contain information such as the items to be shipped, quantities, delivery dates, and customer shipping details.
Packing: Goods are picked from the warehouse shelves or production lines and packed into delivery packages or handling units. The packing process involves assigning materials to specific delivery units and determining packaging materials.
Goods Issue: Once the goods are packed and ready for shipment, a goods issue is posted in SAP to signify the removal of goods from inventory. This updates inventory levels and triggers the billing process.
Delivery Document Printing: Delivery documents such as delivery notes and shipping labels are generated in SAP and printed for inclusion with the shipment.
Shipment Execution: The goods are physically transported to the customer's location using selected carriers or transportation methods.
Delivery Confirmation: Upon successful delivery, the delivery is confirmed in SAP to update the delivery status and trigger subsequent processes such as billing and customer invoicing.

T.code:-

VL01N – With / Without Reference to Sales Order.
VL02N – Single Document Change.
Vl03N – Display Delivery Document.

In the initial Screen of Create Outbound Delivery Need to provide below information.
Shipping Point: Get the shipping point from the shipping tab of sales order line item.
Selection Date : It should be either the material availability date or the system copies the item into the delivery.
Sales Order Number: The sales order number against which the delivery document needs to be created.
From and to Item Number: Line item number of sales order against which needs to be created delivery, if a user does not specify any line item then the system will consider all line items of sales order for delivery creation.

Create outbound delivery without order reference

Then the system will land to the user on Create Delivery Overview screen like the below screenshot.

Picking Tab display

Plant code: Delivery plant
Storage location
Delivery Quantity
UoM
Picked Quantity

The picked quantity is grey out mode that means we have to transfer the order to pick the material.

Transport tab provide information

Transportation Planning date
Transportation Planning status.
Route
Gross weight
Volume

The goods movement tab provides information that which movement type is used for this delivery document.

Select any one line item of the delivery document and click on the item Details button. It will display item data of that line item.

The predecessor data tab provides information about

Reference Document number e.g. Sales order number.
Reference Item: line item number of Sales order number.
Reference Type: Document category.

Click on SAVE button.

Now, the delivery document has been saved with the delivery number.

5. Benefits

Improved order fulfilment accuracy and speed.
Enhanced visibility and traceability of outbound shipments.
Reduction in shipping errors and delays.
Optimal utilization of warehouse resources.
Better customer service and satisfaction.

6. Conclusion

Outbound Delivery in SAP plays a critical role in ensuring the smooth and efficient execution of logistics and shipping operations. By leveraging SAP's robust functionality and integration capabilities, businesses can effectively manage outbound deliveries, meet customer expectations, and drive operational excellence.

sh: 1: fiori: not found-> The most popular error for Fiori Developers

2024-04-05T16:34:00.137000+02:00

Introduction:

In this technical blog, we will detail how to resolve one of the most common issues encountered by SAP UI5/Fiori developers during the deployment of their applications on the Cloud Foundry of SAP BTP.
For the case here, we have the "sh: 1: fiori: not found" error here.

Prerequisites:

SAP BTP Account- If you prefer to deploy on SAP BTP HANA Cloud.
SAP Business Application Studio (recommended) if deploying to SAP BTP HANA Cloud. Even, in this case, I recommend to use SAP BAS only for deployment .
Microsoft Visual Studio Code (optional) can be used for development but specific to this solution just use it as the Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Delving into the Error:

Single Targeted vs. Multi-Targeted Applications: There exists a distinction between single targeted and multi-targeted applications. The issue at hand typically arises with .MTAR applications, particularly SAP UI5 multi-target applications.

"sh:1: Fiori: Not Found" Error: Whenever "cf push" command is executed, developers often encounter the "sh: 1: Fiori: Not Found" error, particularly with MTAR applications. This error is not exclusive to SAP but is a common occurrence across various cloud-native applications.

Solutions and steps to be followed:

Utilize Microsoft Visual Studio Code or SAP Business Application Studio as the IDE: It's recommended to use either Vs Code or SAP Business Application Studio solely as the Integrated Development Environment (IDE). For deployment purposes, stick to SAP Business Application Studio.
Ensure Proper Configuration of Destination Services and HTML5 Services: Make sure to follow the steps for creating Destination Services and HTML5 services in your application as per the provided guidelines.
Perform .MTAR Build: Right-click on the mta.yaml file and execute a .MTAR build.
Discovering Generated .MTAR File: Following the .MTA.YAML build, the generated .mtar file may have a generic name such as abc_appname.mtar.
Deploy .MTAR File: Right-click on the generated .mtar file and select "Deploy MTAR."
Monitor Deployment Process: Once the deployment process concludes, log in to the SAP BTP Cloud Cockpit.
Accessing applications: In the left-hand menu bar, locate HTML5 applications.
Verify Deployed Applications: You should be able to find the deployed applications listed within the HTML5 applications section.

Reference Link for more steps on deployment of Multi Target Applications by SAP: Building and Deploying Multitarget Applications

By following these steps, you can effectively resolve the "sh: 1: fiori : Not Found" error encountered during the deployment of SAP UI5/Fiori applications on the Cloud Foundry of SAP BTP.

How to develop Customer creation Application in SAP Build Apps with OData service

2024-04-05T16:34:12.935000+02:00

Objective: -

Implementing SAP OData URI to SAP Build and Creating Customers in SAP BUILD which can replicate to SAP System

Business Scenario: -

How to create Customers using SAP Build Apps and OData Service.

Prerequisites: -

-> You Have an SAP BTP account or trial account.

-> Inside the BTP account, go to Instances and Subscriptions and create an instance of SAP Build Apps

-> Now go to Security -> Users Tab and assign Role to the user for SAP BUILD Apps

Now, we have to create the SAP Backend connection to SAP BTP : -

Before mapping data from S4H or our SAP System to Build Apps, we need to create a Destination in the BTP and give the required details of the S4H system with ODATA Uri too which we will consume (BTP->Connectivity->Destination )

Connection is now established to that service.

Now go to SAP Build Apps and navigate to Create to create a project.

Now click on Build an Application to create a Application

Now Click on Web & Mobile Application

Now Give the project name and Description and You are good to go.

Inside the app you are working on SAP Build App go to the Authentication section and implement authentication

Now create an App Variable that holds all fields that are present in our OData service.

Now create a page and install a template from the marketplace which is Basic List and implement your UI for Customer Creation and a home page where all customers are displayed.

Now go to the DATA Section then go to SAP Systems and connect to your s4h System and the service that you called from the destination from SAP BTP will be available to you now.

Now Click on this list go to ‘list resource’ fill in all the fields and configure authentication from Properties

Now Go to the Logic section of List and implement logic like this

Now click on the Create button go to Show logic for Button then implement this logic

Now create another page as shown below and build a form to create Customer Data using input fields.

Now do data binding to all fields by clicking on it and then assigning value to it

Now do a similar mapping for every field

Also, implement a condition to alert that an empty value is not allowed.

Now on the submit button implement logic that submit the data and updates the data to that OData service and thus will be reflected in the database table too

Preview Your Developments: -

Now when everything is done go to the Launch section then Preview your app.

By this, we can preview our application either on the web or can be previewed in Smartphones.

Our Application Now looks like-

When we click on the create button the second page appears

Fill out details and now our customer is created.

So now your customer is created in your database table which you can check by going to se11->KNA1

And you can see your entry got updated in table KNA1

Recap - SAP ALM at SAP Insider Las Vegas 2024

2024-04-10T16:36:29.972000+02:00

Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to take the time to share with you some of my experiences and key topics from the SAP Insider Las Vegas 2024 event that took place from March 19-21.

This was the first time I have attended this well-organized event at the Bellagio Resort and Casino, and I was very impressed with the number of topics covered in over 150+ sessions which ranged from application development, integration, finance, cybersecurity, and more. The event was well-attended and there were many fantastic opportunities to network between sessions as well as in the exhibit hall during evening events.

As one of the product managers for SAP Cloud ALM, I was co-presenting with Tim Steuer, VP for ALM at SAP, at several sessions covering SAP Cloud ALM adoption, the transition process from SAP Solution Manager to SAP Cloud ALM, and how to use SAP Cloud ALM for Operations to effectively monitor SAP BTP.

The first order of business was to deliver the Monday pre-conference session “Best Practices to Approaching Transformation: Combine SAP Signavio, SAP Cloud ALM and Tricentis for an Optimized Outcome” with Andreas Zehent, VP of Cloud Success Services for SAP Signavio.

Customers have been asking: How do SAP LeanIX, SAP Signavio, and SAP Cloud work together? What is the purpose of each offering, and when should they be used during my transformation project? What integrations are available today, and what is planned? The half-day pre-conference session aimed to answer these questions by introducing SAP's Transformation Suite approach that assists customers with their business transformation by combining the power of SAP LeanIX, SAP Signavio, and SAP Cloud ALM (with Tricentis Test Automation) into one cohesive methodology.

Attendees gained valuable knowledge about how the suite's components work collectively to provide an unmatched suite experience and guidance for initiating the journey to the cloud. Andreas presented and demoed the available integration between SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio, and Tim covered the future plans for integrating SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio with SAP Cloud ALM. Tim also revealed how SAP Cloud ALM (included in customer maintenance) is the anchor point for customer transformations, enables the latest innovations to be adopted at scale, and is also the key driver for customer Clean Core initiatives.

And for the first time, SAP presented a unified map of where each product adds value to the transformation journey and laid out the current and planned integration points, as shown below:

We received great feedback from the attendees, who told us that they were impressed with the level of detail as well as the logical approach of the session content.

For the “Move from SAP Solution Manager to SAP Cloud ALM: Tips and Tricks” session, Tim and I explained how SAP supports customers during their transition from SAP Solution Manager to SAP Cloud ALM with services, learning offerings, and additional tools. We introduced the resources and recommendations available at the Transition Center to guide customers through the process depending on their situation, and showed how the Readiness Check for SAP Cloud ALM helps customers determine their SAP Solution Manager usage and allows them to map out their transition strategy. In addition, tools to migrate SAP Solution Manager content like documents and test cases to SAP Cloud ALM are planned for later this summer, along with a methodology roadmap to help plan the transition project.

In the session “Re-Imagine Your Application Lifecycle Management Strategy” we laid out SAP’s ALM portfolio and how SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Focused Run helps customers coordinate innovation while keeping the business healthy. SAP Cloud ALM provides a simple and cloud-native solution for implementing and operating the intelligent enterprise, while SAP Focused Run (on the SAP pricelist) provides a powerful solution for handling large landscapes with advanced system management requirements.

Our session “Operations of SAP Business Technology Platform with SAP Cloud ALM” outlined how SAP Cloud ALM’s capabilities support different SaaS services as well as custom-built applications based on SAP Business Technology Platform. I demoed how SAP Cloud ALM acts as a single entry point to manage and monitor the health, integrations, exceptions, and performance of SAP BTP services and applications, and discussed how SAP Cloud ALM uses the open-source OpenTelemetry standard to instrument custom-built applications in the SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry Environment or SAP BTP, Kyma runtime.

However, it wasn’t a case of all work and no play. Tim and I were able to visit the Sphere Las Vegas, which was very impressive both inside and out.

We also took advantage of some liquid refreshment courtesy of the partners in the exhibit hall 😊

Overall, SAP Insider Las Vegas 2024 was a fantastic event, and we look forward to attending next year!

Futuristic Aerospace or Defense BTP Data Mesh Layer using Collibra, Next Labs ABAC/DAM, IAG and GRC

2024-04-11T19:00:57.747000+02:00

Background

In this blog, we will explore few ideas for creating a domain-centric data mesh using SAP components, without engaging in the debate of whether data fabric or data mesh is the right approach.

We will focus on a futuristic use case within the Aerospace or Defense industry, which demands stringent data governance due to compliance requirements such as ITAR, EAR, BAFA, DOE 810, NERC/CIP, and SEC. Additionally, safeguarding intellectual property is a critical concern as business growth often relies on increased collaboration, both internally and externally, spanning product and engineering, supply chain, cross industry- partnerships, and joint ventures. I am happy to hear your ideas too!

Business Problem

Aerospace and defense customers often face challenges in keeping up with rapid technological advancements due to the burden of data debts and the need to comply with stringent legal and regulatory data security requirements.

This challenge is further amplified when dealing with legacy ERP systems, as identifying and restricting sensitive data becomes complex, hindering the end-to-end data lifecycle management. Moreover, the Aerospace and defense industry grapples with the formidable challenge of reducing IT costs, as the presence of significant data risks renders offshore operations an impractical option.

Let's consider the example of a product manager based in the United States, working for a US corporation. Their product is subject to ITAR regulations but has both government and commercial applications.

In order to comply with the business rule, the access to ITAR data in SAP should only be granted to US persons while they are in US locations. However, when this product manager is on a business trip to Singapore, meeting with suppliers at their APAC regional headquarters, exposing material data, CAD drawings, or BOMs stored in SAP would violate ITAR regulations.

In the context of a UK energy company establishing a joint venture with a local company in China to cater to the emerging market, an added layer of data security is required based on location. This ensures that access to BOM items and intellectual property not related to the joint venture is restricted, safeguarding sensitive information and preserving the integrity of the collaboration.

In the context of the aerospace and defense , "Data is not only the ammunition that fuels engines but it is also an the armor that protects international and national peace"

BTP SAP S/4 HANA Data Mesh Pattern

To solve the problem described above, we will hypothetically integrate Collibra, Next Labs ABAC/DAM, IAG and GRC and SAP S/4 HANA to provide data insights to users without compromising data security requirements. Please note that is is hypothetical pattern and we have to review and apply it according to client specific data security requirements.

Solution Components	Usage
Collibra	This component can be used to document and define data governance policies, meta data catalogue, end to end data lineage, data quality KPI's, data protection and data privacy rules for bill of materials.
SAP IAG	SAP IAG can handle the user access request and provisioning workflows to authenticate and authorize the user identity with the client's identity provider (ex: Active Directory)
SAP GRC	SAP GRC can provide the necessary controls and policies for access management and perform risk analysis and segregation of duties (SoD) checks, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements across all SAP applications in the landscape.
Next Labs ABAC/DAM	Next Labs ABAC/DAM provides robust protection against unauthorized access to sensitive SAP data by implementing fine-grained access controls. These controls can be applied at the level of individual data attributes or data ranges, enabling customers to safeguard their data while meeting compliance requirements. By examining the attributes of the data being accessed, the context of the request, and the user's identity, Next Labs ABAC/DAM allows organizations to control access to data, business transactions, and batch processes based on defined policies. With SAP DAM, any changes in the attributes of the data or the user are dynamically considered, and the relevant policies are applied in real-time to enforce fine-grained access controls across various business functions. For example, a rule may specify that only US-based employees can access ITAR-classified materials from US locations. When a user attempts to access such materials, this rule is validated in real-time, ensuring that access is granted only to authorized individuals who meet the specified criteria. Through the integration of Next Labs ABAC/DAM with SAP systems, organizations can effectively protect their sensitive data, maintain compliance, and enforce granular access controls across a wide range of business operations.
SAP Data sphere	This is optional but we can use this if you want to provide flexible predictive analytics to the users.
SAP BTP AI Launch Pad	This is optional and can be used to identify repeat breach patterns, time and detect security data anomalies in advance and add further access controls.

MVP- Bill of Material Data Mesh

In the world of aerospace and defense, organizations face the challenge of managing bill of material (BOM) data across multiple systems. R By integrating diverse systems such as SAP S/4HANA, Team Center, and Siemens, they created a unified network of interconnected data mesh. This will enable seamless collaboration among internal and external engineering, supply chain, and product sales teams. With real-time visibility into BOMs, teams made informed decisions, optimized designs, synchronized manufacturing, and tailored offerings. The BOM data mesh can empower the organizations to achieve faster product development cycles, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction.

Step 1: Define Role Requirements, Meta-data catalo Data Governance and access policies for BOM in Collibra

Identify the specific role requirements based on your organization's needs and compliance regulations.
Determine the attributes that will be used for access control, such as user roles, data sensitivity, and contextual factors.

Step 2: Understand BOM Creation and Editing Requirements

The organization requires that only users with specific engineering roles can create and edit BOMs. Additionally, certain fields in the BOM may be restricted for external supply chain users based on data sensitivity, such as pricing information.

Determine the functional access (actions user can perform) and data access (data records or fields users can see) and governance (rules for access)

Step 3: Define SAP S/4HANA Role

Create a custom role named "BOM Specialist" or copy standard role in SAP S/4HANA.
Assign the authorization object M_BOM_GRP to the role, which controls access to BOM groups.
Assign transaction codes CS01 (Create BOM) and CS02 (Change BOM) to allow users with this role to perform BOM creation and editing tasks.

Step 4: Configure Next Lab ABAC DAM

SAP Next Lab ABAC DAM works natively with SAP and manages authorization logic through an externalized, standards-based policy framework. For instance, a rule may state, “Allow only US-based employees to access ITAR-classified materials from US locations.” When a user attempts to access materials, this rule is validated in real-time before access is granted.

Configure Next Lab ABAC with attributes such as "User Role," "Data Sensitivity Level," and "Contextual Factors."
Define "User Role" as an attribute to determine the user's role in the organization.
Define "Data Sensitivity Level" as an attribute to classify BOMs based on their sensitivity, such as "Confidential" or "Public."
Define "Contextual Factors" as attributes to consider additional factors, such as project or department.

Step 5: Integrate SAP GRC and Next Lab ABAC

This MVP use case leverages SAP GRC Access Control and SAP authorization for Governance and Functional Authorization and leverages ABAC for Data Authorization. It combines the features and fully integrated capabilities of SAP GRC Access Control and SAP authorization, such as ease of user assignment and role management, to efficiently supporting data attributes and avoiding the “role explosion” and custom development that would otherwise be necessary and costly.

Integrate SAP GRC and Next Lab ABAC to synchronize roles and access control policies.
Map the "BOM Specialist" role in SAP GRC to the corresponding role in Next Lab ABAC, ensuring consistency in access control.

Step 5: Define ABAC Policies

Define ABAC policies in Next Lab ABAC to enforce attribute-based access control for BOM creation and editing.
Create a policy that allows users with the "BOM Specialist" role (User Role attribute) to create and edit BOMs.
Create a policy that restricts access to certain fields in the BOM based on the "Data Sensitivity Level" attribute and user profile policy (Ex: Manufacturing, Engineering, Supply Chain).

Step 6: Test and Validate the Role using AI

Train the model on different user profiles to validate data access using SAP BTP AI Launch Pad
Train the model further to auto-correct access issues and detect patterns to suggest changes to role access profiles (don’t let AI implement dynamic role access changes as it can be dangerous 😊)
Perform supervised automated test to test the “BOM Specialist" role by assigning it to a user and verifying that they can successfully create and edit BOMs.
Validate that the ABAC policies.

Step 7: Integration SAP BTP Identity Access Governance to Active Directory

By integrating SAP BTP Identity Access Governance directly, users can seamlessly access data from multiple systems, including SAP S/4HANA, Team Center, Siemens, and other engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain systems. This integration enables a cohesive data mesh approach, allowing users to view and manage bill of materials across various systems.

Step 8: Integrate Collibra and Datasphere to Monetize and Publish bill of material insights to engineering, supply chain and product sales team.

You have the ability to define and design self-service analytic insight reports, which can be monetized and shared with both your internal and external engineering, supply chain, and product sales teams.

Usage of Custom Destination Service in BTP, ABAP Environment

2024-04-18T12:54:36.688000+02:00

The regular Way

In BTP you configure the destination on subaccount level, here you see how to do so:

this way you can access the data from SAP BTP, ABAP environment:

DATA(http_destination) =  cl_http_destination_provider=>create_by_cloud_destination(
                i_name                  = 'service1' "destination name
                i_authn_mode            = if_a4c_cp_service=>service_specific
                ).

DATA(http_client) = cl_web_http_client_manager=>create_by_http_destination( i_destination = http_destination ).

As a second option, you can use custom communication scenario, how this is done, is shown in this tutorial.

The custom Way

Intention

at some point a lot of peoples and project are using the subaccount and are able to reuse the destinations. We wanted a separation from other solutions also when it comes to destinations.

Solution

In five steps I show You how to do this.

1.Step: Create Custom Destination Service

Create Instance of custom destination service, give it a name, make sure to enable it in the same Cloud Foundry Space as your ABAP Environment is assigned to:

No parameters are required, your instance should look like this:

after hitting "Create" the Destination Service Instance is provisioned:

2.Step: Creating Destination(s)

now you can navigate to the custom service instance and go to "Destinations". From there you can create one to many destinations or add more later.

3. Step: Create a Service Key

Hit "Service Keys" and generate a service key without any parameters. The name is not relevant.

The result looks like that:

4. Step: Connect ABAP Environment to Destination Service via Communication Arrangement

Go to ABAP Launchpad and find the App "Communication Arrangements". Create a new communication arrangement of Scenario SAP_COM_0276. Give it a name and copy the service key from previous step in.

Your communication arrangement looks like this now:

Optionally you can rename the Service Instance Name, what I did in my example:

5. Step: Usage in BTP, ABAP Environment

DATA(http_destination) =  cl_http_destination_provider=>create_by_cloud_destination(
                i_name                  = 'service1' "destination name
                i_authn_mode            = if_a4c_cp_service=>service_specific
                i_service_instance_name = 'MYSERVICEINSTANCE' "the service instance name
            ).

DATA(http_client) = cl_web_http_client_manager=>create_by_http_destination( i_destination = http_destination ).

Final Notes

Next to the classics ways of subaccount level destinations and custom communication scenarios, you can create custom destination service instances and use it in SAP BTP, ABAP environment

The initial effort is a bit higher, but it comes with better separation in your BTP account.

Note that the shown solutions are not usable in trial environments.

if you like this post or it helped you, don't hesitate to give kudos.

Capture Your Own Workload Statistics in the ABAP Environment in the Cloud

2024-04-18T13:02:05.620000+02:00

As an administrator in SAP BTP, ABAP environment or in SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment, it’s important to keep track of performance issues and identify bottlenecks. Now SAP offers a few Fiori apps to help you with monitoring the system workload. However, relying on what data the system automatically collects for you sometimes isn’t enough.

Instead, you want to define yourself what kind of workload information is captured, such as in the following use cases:

Standard apps and tools show you that there’s a high workload, but when you drill down to details, you don’t get the information you’re interested in.
You want to monitor the workload of a clearly defined special case, such as the workload generated by a user or by one of your custom apps (which you might want to watch using its request entry point).
You have specific requests where you want to get alerted when the workload, for example, exceeds a defined threshold.

In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use the Capture Request Statistics app to cover these use cases.

Background: the System Workload App

Before I introduce you to the Capture Request Statistics app, let me start with a brief recap of what the System Workload app can do for you out of the box (for more details, see the blog post Analyzing performance degradations in the ABAP environment in the Cloud).

Let’s say you want to analyze the performance of your ABAP system in the System Workload app:

System Workload app

You find the top resource-consuming application in the system and want to analyze it further. You can analyze this application in more detail by choosing the Details arrow at the end of the row. In the following screen, you typically find samples of single ABAP statistics records for this workload. Now, how are these ABAP statistics records collected by default and how can you influence what is captured? Let's take a look behind the scenes.

Default Configuration: Capture Workload Statistics with Static Thresholds

An ABAP Environment in the Cloud comes with pre-delivered SAP profiles that capture ABAP statistics records in your system. You can find these pre-delivered SAP profiles in the Capture Request Statistics app:

Pre-delivered SAP profiles

These profiles ensure that the statistics about “bad” requests - meaning a high consumption of compute resources – are captured in the system. If you look, for example, at the details of the static profile for expensive requests regarding server response time, you find a static threshold of 1 second:

Pre-delivered SAP profile - capture requests with high server response time

With this profile always active, ABAP statistics records with an ABAP server response time larger than 1 second are captured and stored. Similarly, the other pre-delivered static profiles capture requests that exceed 1 second regarding HANA CPU time, ABAP CPU time, etc.

In the profile header, you can find that for the SAP-delivered profiles, a sampling rate of 1% has been set. It means that only 1% of the records that fulfill the filter condition will be captured. In addition, the record limit per minute is set to 50. The periodic data collector that runs every minute and processes the ABAP statistics records (together with the profiles in the Capture Request Statistics app) will only store the ABAP statistics records up to this limit in the database. So, if many ABAP statistics records fulfill the filter condition at a time, not all of these records will be stored.

For SAP-delivered profiles, this low record limit per minute together with the low sampling rate ensures that the workload and data footprint for processing and storing monitoring data in your system stay low, even if the overall business workload on the system gets exceedingly high.

Default Configuration: Capture Workload Statistics Dynamically

In addition to the pre-delivered static profiles, the dynamic SAP profile SAP_DYNAMIC_CAPTURING ensures that for the top workload of your system “good” statistic samples of requests are also captured (with respect to the server response time). As a result, you can compare statistics of samples of “bad” workload to statistics of samples of “good” workload. The top workload in your system might vary as well as the behavior in response times. The dynamic profile adapts to these changes.

In addition, for the top workload, the dynamic profile captures samples of ABAP statistics when their server response times deviate too much from the average server response time of this specific kind of workload. This ensures that for workloads with typically different server response times, samples of ABAP statistics records are also at hand, even if their server response times do not exceed the static thresholds of the static profile types.

In principle, the pre-delivered static profiles together with the dynamic profile will give you a high chance that for your top workload, you’ll find samples of ABAP statistics records in the system that you can use for detailed analysis. You get this data using the System Workload app and by drilling down to the ABAP statistics records, and in most of the cases, that’s enough. However, as these statistics are sampled, it might happen that sometimes you don't find any records that you can use for further analysis:

System Workload app - no detailed statistics available

To have these detailed statistics for your root cause analysis, you can capture your own workload statistics in your ABAP environment in the Cloud.

Capture Your Own Workload Statistics in the Capture Request Statistics App

You can create your own capture profiles, of course. While the SAP profiles are designed in such a way that they capture samples of ABAP statistics records for generic expensive workload in the ABAP tenant, you might want to specify the workload more concretely. For example, you might be interested specifically in the ABAP statistics records of your user or of a certain outbound communication arrangement. Or you might be interested in workload that exceeds a specific threshold (as in the pre-delivered SAP profiles). To do so, you can create your own capture profile.

If, for example, you have built a new ABAP RESTful application for travel bookings, you could define a profile that filters on its specific request entry point (consisting of request entry name and request entry type):

Custom profile

A custom profile is in status Inactive when newly created. If you click on the Activate button, the profile status will be set to status Processing, and only then will the data collector process ABAP statistics records that fulfill the defined filter conditions. On activation of the profile, you also need to specify the duration of how long the profile should be active. When the duration is exceeded and all the relevant ABAP statistics records are processed, the profile will be set to status Finished and no further ABAP statistics records will be processed for this profile.

In the example profile shown here, a sampling rate of 100% and a record limit per minute of 1000 has been set. Both are the maximum possible values. This setting guarantees that all ABAP statistics records fulfilling the filter conditions are captured. Of course, if the record limit of 1000 is exceeded, you won’t capture everything. But this happens only in rare cases. In any case, it’s ensured that also for a badly designed capture profile, your business is not impacted by the additional workload of capturing request statistics.

The target user group in the profile header indicates that only workload is considered that is running in customer user context. You can specify this further by considering, for example, only customer communication users or customer business users.

If the profile is active and users are performing actions in your ABAP RESTful application, the according ABAP statistics records are captured and stored in the database for a period that you have defined in the retention time of your profile.

For further analysis, e.g., the performance of a new app that you have built, you can navigate to the captured ABAP statistics records by clicking on Analyze Request Statistics. There you can analyze the captured single ABAP statistics records in detail and obtain insights into the behavior of your newly created app:

Analyze ABAP statistics records in detail

You can find more information, for example, about SQL statements or, in the case of communication, about HTTP calls by choosing the Details arrow at the end of a row, which leads you to the details of that ABAP statistics record.

If your new application belongs to the more expensive workload in the system, you’ll easily find the captured ABAP statistics records also in the System Workload app. There, you start from the overall workload (aggregated ABAP statistics records) of your business tenants. If you drill down to the details of your application, you will get to the ABAP statistics records. Your custom profile ensures that they have been captured:

System Workload app - detailed statistics available

Note: With the Capture Request Statistics app, you can also define profiles with profile type SQL Trace. With these profiles, you can trace the execution of SQL statements. These captured SQL statements can be further analyzed in the SQL Trace Analysis app. This might be another story for another blog post in the future, so stay tuned.

You can find more information about the Capture Request Statistics app in the following documentation:

Getting Notified About Specific Workloads

You may have noticed that by defining a custom capture profile for capturing ABAP statistics records, you can set the option for Health Monitoring. If you have connected your SAP BTP, ABAP environment or SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment tenant to SAP Cloud ALM, you’ll receive a counter per capture request statistics profile in SAP Cloud ALM for Operations in the Health Monitoring app. You can find more information on how to connect your tenant to SAP Cloud ALM here:

For our custom profile example Z_STATIC_PROFILE, you’ll find the tile Captured ABAP Statistics Records in the Health Monitoring app in your connected SAP Cloud ALM tenant. If you click on the tile for details, you find your custom profile together with a counter

SAP Cloud ALM - Health Monitoring

This counter is normalized to 5 minutes. This means that during the last 5 minutes, 27 ABAP statistics records were captured in your ABAP tenant that fulfill the filter conditions that you have defined in your custom profile. Besides this usage scenario, you can also use the Health Monitoring feature on capture profiles with static thresholds (like in the case of the pre-delivered static SAP profiles) to count how often your defined thresholds are exceeded. For more information, see also the blog post Monitoring the Performance of Outbound Communication in the ABAP Environment in the Cloud.

If you want to get alerted by email when the filter conditions of your profile are hit a certain number of times, you can configure alerts in SAP Cloud ALM in the Health Monitoring app. For more information, see the blog post Monitoring the Health of the ABAP System in the Cloud.

Summary

The default configuration of your SAP BTP, ABAP environment or SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment tenant comes with pre-delivered SAP profiles that capture ABAP statistics records for the most important workload in your system. This helps you analyze and understand your system workload in detail.

However, if you want to enhance this default configuration, you can do so by creating your own profiles using the Capture Request Statistics app. The monitoring data collector ensures that requests that fulfill your filter conditions are captured and stored in the system for further analysis. You can define profiles for capturing ABAP statistics records and for capturing SQL statements.

Let’s quickly recap in which use cases creating your own profiles in the Capture Request Statistics app is useful:

In your standard system-local analysis of the system behavior, detailed statistics are missing for a certain workload that you need to have at hand.
You want to proactively capture extensive details for a workload of your choice to analyze it in detail.
In SAP Cloud ALM, you want to understand how often your workload in the landscape hits certain criteria (= your filter conditions defined in the profiles), and you want to get alerted in this case

I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to this blog post, especially my colleagues @anke_griesbaum, @Karen_Kuck, @SabineReich, and @steffen_siegmund.

Let me know in the comments if and how you’ve used the Capture Request Statistics app and what you think of it.

Analyze Expensive ABAP Workload in the Cloud with Work Process Sampling

2024-04-19T15:56:01.041000+02:00

As an administrator or developer in the ABAP environment in the cloud, you need to keep track of the workload that kept your system busy throughout the day or at specific points in time. You want to check how many of your work processes are or were occupied with what kind of workload, consuming how much ABAP CPU time and main memory. Finally, you want to find out which ABAP coding was responsible for the high consumption of these resources.

In this blog post, I’d like to show you how you can use the Sampled Work Process Data app to analyze concurrent workload and resource consumption and to find the root cause of a performance problem.

Sampled Work Process Data App vs. Other Tools

Maybe you are already familiar with the System Workload app that provides an overview of the ABAP workload in your system. The following blog post gives you an insight with examples:

Analyzing Performance Degradations in the ABAP Environment in the Cloud

The ABAP system provides two data capturing mechanisms for the ABAP workload: ABAP statistics records and ABAP work process samples. The different strategies for data collection and timing aspects are explained in the following documentation on SAP Help Portal:

Monitoring the System Workload: Data Collection and Focus of Available Apps | SAP Help Portal

Both data capturing strategies are designed to cover different scenarios. You can read more about the supported monitoring use cases in the following documentation on SAP Help Portal:

Monitoring the System Workload: Apps and Their Use Cases | SAP Help Portal

The ABAP statistics data of the System Workload app is persisted after the respective processing step has finished. In addition, the data on CPU time and main memory consumption is only available for the entire processing step, so you can’t determine if any interesting "hotspot" is hiding somewhere in the ABAP coding, let alone where they’re precisely located in the code.

You might also have heard about - or already used - the ABAP Profiler, which creates ABAP traces that provide detailed insights into your program, its resource consumption and potential "hotspots" in your coding. However, using the ABAP Profiler requires you to explicitly activate it before running any specific program or application. This means that retrospective analysis is not possible. Furthermore, the results are usually limited to your application only, or at best a subset of the workload in the system. Other software running concurrently, which may cause resource bottlenecks, is not considered. For more information about the ABAP Profiler, please refer to the following documentation on SAP Help Portal:

Profiling ABAP Code | SAP Help Portal

If you want to detect a large resource consumption immediately or detect the responsible code location without activating any tracing, you’d rather use the Sampled Work Process Data app.

Get an Overview of the ABAP CPU Time Consumption

On the SAP Fiori launchpad of the ABAP environment in SAP BTP, I went to the Technical Monitoring area and chose the Sampled Work Process Data app. This app is available for administrator and developer roles.

On the entry screen of the app, I get an overview of the ABAP CPU time consumption for the last 24 hours with a resolution of ten minutes. I can easily adjust the time range and the resolution using the time slider at the top.

Time Slider

I can even change to a granularity of single seconds. Of course, this only makes sense for a total time range of much less than 24 hours, such as 1 minute, for instance.

In the upper part of the screen, there’s a graphical overview drilled down by the Request Entry Type (for example, OData v4 or SQL Service). In the lower part of the screen, there’s a table that lists the top 10 consumers with more detailed characteristics, such as the Request Entry Name. Additionally, there’s a metric that indicates the overall ABAP CPU utilization as a percentage over time. This is represented by the black line in the screenshot below, with a scale located on the right side.

ABAP CPU Time Overview

Analyze Concurrent Workload and Resource Consumption

The entry screen provides four different metrics to depict resource consumption. These metrics include ABAP CPU time, main memory, and dialog and background work process utilization. Speaking of filters, you can use the filters for Transaction Code, Request Entry Type, Request Entry Name, Tenant ID and WM Process Class ID to focus on what you are really interested in:

Filter and Drilldown

Filter values can be precise values or wildcards.

When it comes to drilldown, you might be interested in drilling down according to other characteristics or a more fine-grained resolution of the depicted workload. On the upper right, you can define the set of characteristics that the drilldown is based on:

Adjusting the Drilldown

By default, this is only the Request Entry Type. However, you can also select the Transaction Code, Request Entry Name, Tenant ID and WM Process Class ID, either individually or in any combination that is appropriate for your specific use case. This allows you to investigate concurrent resource consumption in different dimensions. In the chart below, the top values of your drilldown characteristics (in this case, just the Request Entry Name) are displayed accordingly:

ABAP CPU Time Drilled Down by the Request Entry Name

In the chart, you can clearly identify which types of workloads are competing concurrently for resources within the same 10 minutes interval. By adjusting the time slider, you can also choose much finer granularities.

Note: Please be aware that the work process sampling is, as the name suggests, based on samples (snapshots) of the work process data provided by the ABAP kernel that are taken once per second. The ABAP CPU time consumption is then calculated as the delta between consecutive samples. This means that only expensive workloads running for more than a second are displayed as relevant ABAP CPU time consumers.

Reveal the Root Cause of Performance Problems

Now let’s assume that we don’t have a uniform distribution of the workload as in the example above. Instead, one of the Request Entry Name values is popping up again and again, for example, around 09:30 a.m.:

ABAP CPU Time with an Expensive Workload

I click on the bar in the chart as shown in the above screenshot (which filters for the respective Request Entry Name and time interval) and then on the Details arrow on the right of a table row. This takes me to the Request Entry Point screen for the ABAP CPU time. (If I had switched to the Main Memory or another aspect before, I would arrive at a corresponding detail view for that metric, of course.) Since I have also selected a specific time interval, I get a zoomed-in view with a resolution of single seconds, here for the time range between 09:20 and 09:30:

Request Entry Point Screen with a Resolution of Single Seconds

This screens also offers a graphical overview over time, along with further details in the table. However, the drilldown characteristic in the chart is the Current Program Name, that is the name of the coding artifact (typically a class name) that was being executed when the sample was created. This chart may already give you a pretty good understanding of which parts of your application (on a technical level in terms of ABAP coding that is run) are expensive and where you may find optimization potential (as shown in the screenshot below). Clicking on the legend or directly on the chart filters the table data accordingly. You can zoom in and zoom out, as on the previous screens. The lower part of the screen shows a list of single work process samples, which include detailed characteristics and metrics describing the work process at specific points in time.

In this case, we can recognize two executions of the same workload that were both running for two and a half minutes. During the execution, the CPU time consumption per second was often close to 1000 milliseconds.

“Most Prominent” Current Program Name in Our Example

Now I click on the Details arrow at the end of a row in the table, which leads me to the Single Work Process Sample object page with even more details:

Characteristics on the Object Page

For a database-intensive scenario, you have the option to navigate further to the ABAP statistics record using the link on the upper right of the screen. On the ABAP Statistics Record screen, you can find – among other things – detailed data about the HANA processing time and the single expensive SQL statements, as explained in the blog post about the System Workload app mentioned at the beginning of this blog post.

Now let’s go back to the Single Work Process Sample object page. Here, I can also switch to the Work Process: Metrics tab page of the object page to learn, for instance, about the number of table entries transferred between the application server and the database within the last second before this sample was taken:

Metrics on the Object Page

In this ABAP CPU-intensive scenario , work process sampling can help directly identify whether there’s room for improvement. You can recognize that your application is CPU-intensive if many single samples have a CPU time consumption that’s not too far from 1 second, as is the case here.

Typical defects include expensive operations on large internal tables. On the ABAP Stack Trace tab page of the object page, I can check whether this is the reason for poor performance:

ABAP Stack Trace on the Object Page

By navigating from here to ABAP development tools for Eclipse (ADT) or an HTML viewer (by clicking on the Details arrow next to a line in the table), I can easily jump to the respective code where, in our simple example, a LOOP statement is executed on an internal table.

Note: In the case of single expensive statements (typically a READ TABLE or a LOOP statement, as in our example here, or a long-running Open SQL statement), the ABAP kernel – when regaining control and returning a stack trace –usually points to the next statement (the one directly following the really expensive one). Thus, we shouldn’t be concerned about the IF statement, but rather the LOOP statement.

ABAP Code Behind the Performance Glitch

Verify the Impact of Performance Improvements

In this simple example, the performance of the statement can be significantly improved by introducing a secondary key. In addition, we slightly adjust the LOOP statement by referring to the secondary key:

Enhancement of the Static Attribute ST_PIERS

Loop Statement Using the Secondary Key

We can assess the impact of this tiny change by inspecting the time interval from 10:00 to 10:10 a.m., during which the same workload was run again. This can be done on both the Sampled Work Process Data entry screen ...

Sampled Work Process Data Screen After Fixing the Issue

...and the Request Entry Point screen by selecting the respective time interval.

Request Entry Point Screen After Fixing the Issue

We can clearly recognize that now two executions of the same workload finish within seconds and that the FIND_RELATION_DATA method does not even show up in any of the collected work process samples anymore. Here are both versions of the workload in direct comparison on the Request Entry Point screen:

Non-Optimized and Optimized Workload on the Request Entry Point Screen

Conclusion

The Sampled Work Process Data app in the Technical Monitoring area of the SAP Fiori launchpad in an ABAP environment in the cloud gives you a lot of insights into concurrent workload in your system and lets you glance under the hood of ABAP CPU or memory intensive applications. It bridges the gap between apps based on ABAP statistics records and tracing tools like the ABAP Profiler.

I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to this blogpost, especially my colleagues anke.griesbaum, christian.cop, steffen.siegmund, ingrid.mautes, karen.kuck and sabine.reich.

For more information, refer to the following documentation on SAP Help Portal:

Sampled Work Process Data | SAP Help Portal

How to improve the ADT Class Runner with additional Features

2024-04-24T10:28:47.088000+02:00

What is a Class Runner?

A class runner is a great tool to test code snippets and run code directly from ADT. You can even write a simple log to the console in Eclipse.

What can be improved?

When using multiple systems and complex projects I got annoyed at some point in time, that I don't know from which system the last log was, when it was written by which runner and if the last execution has finished or failed maybe.

Thats when I started my own class runner that have some improved capabilities.

How does it look like?

The output looks like this:

You see when, what, by whom and where it was started.
For every log entry you get a timestamp.
You see when the execution finished.
All times and dates are formatted in your personal date and time format

What about the ABAP code? Your code gets defined in the logic() method.

CLASS zcl_runner_demo DEFINITION
  PUBLIC
  INHERITING FROM zcl_base_runner
  FINAL
  CREATE PUBLIC .

  PUBLIC SECTION.
    METHODS: logic REDEFINITION.
  PROTECTED SECTION.
  PRIVATE SECTION.
ENDCLASS.

CLASS zcl_runner_demo IMPLEMENTATION.
  METHOD logic.
    write( `Hello World` ).
    write( `this is a demo of the enhanced class runner` ).
    write( 123 ).
  ENDMETHOD.

ENDCLASS.

Methods write() and out->write()

The write() method has the same signature as the out->write() method, you can even access the original out->write() if needed.

  METHOD logic.
    write( `Hello World` ).
    write( `this is a demo of the enhanced class runner` ).
    write( 123 ).
    out->write( `bare write` ).
  ENDMETHOD.

of course you can pass structured and table data to write(), like you can do to out->write()

  METHOD logic.
    DATA ls_airport type /dmo/airport.
    write( `Hello World` ).
    ls_airport = value #( airport_id = 'SAP' city = 'Dokkerland' ).
    write( ls_airport ).
    write( name = 'Info about airport' data = ls_airport ).
  ENDMETHOD.

Uncaught exceptions

Method logic is secured against uncaught exceptions.

  METHOD logic.
    write( `Hello World` ).
    raise EXCEPTION new cx_abap_invalid_name(  ).
  ENDMETHOD.

It logs the behaviour:

How does it look under the hood?

It is basically an abstract class that wraps the original ADT class runner:

"! <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en">Base Runner</p>
"! Improved class runner with enhanced logging capabilities
CLASS zcl_base_runner DEFINITION
  PUBLIC
  ABSTRACT
  CREATE PUBLIC.

  PUBLIC SECTION.

    INTERFACES if_oo_adt_classrun .

    "! <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en">This method implements your logic</p>
    "! You can use {  .METH:write } with enhanced capabilities or the {  .DATA:out }->write( ) for plain logging.
    "! @raising cx_root | <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en">any exception not caught, will be handled in the runner.</p>
    METHODS logic ABSTRACT
      RAISING cx_root.

    CLASS-METHODS convertuuid
      IMPORTING
                str            TYPE string
      RETURNING VALUE(rv_uuid) TYPE sysuuid_c32.

  PROTECTED SECTION.

    DATA out TYPE REF TO if_oo_adt_classrun_out.

    "! <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en">wrapper for out->write( )</p>
    "! this enhances the default function by writing a timestamp.
    "! this method should be used in {@link .METH:logic }
    "! @parameter data | <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en"></p>
    "! @parameter name | <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en"></p>
    METHODS write
      IMPORTING
        data TYPE any
        name TYPE string OPTIONAL.

  PRIVATE SECTION.

    "! <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en">determine the current timestamp and returns as string</p>
    "! <ul><li>in users timezone</li><li>in users prefered format</li></ul>
    "! @parameter rv_dateandtime | <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en"></p>
    CLASS-METHODS getCurrentDateandTimeFormatted
      RETURNING VALUE(rv_dateandtime) TYPE string.

    "! <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en">draws a horizontal line on the console</p>
    "!
    "! @parameter out | <p class="shorttext synchronized" lang="en"></p>
    CLASS-METHODS horizontalLine
      IMPORTING out TYPE REF TO if_oo_adt_classrun_out.

ENDCLASS.



CLASS zcl_base_runner IMPLEMENTATION.

  METHOD if_oo_adt_classrun~main.

    me->out = out.

    horizontalline( out ).

    TRY.

        out->write( |Start on { xco_cp=>current->tenant( )->get_url( io_type = xco_cp_tenant=>url_type->ui )->get_host(  ) } runner { cl_abap_classdescr=>get_class_name( me ) } by { cl_abap_context_info=>get_user_formatted_name( ) }| &&
        | at { getcurrentdateandtimeformatted(  ) }| ).

      CATCH cx_abap_context_info_error INTO DATA(lc_context_error).
        "handle exception
        out->write( 'Error occured in determine current user:' ).
        out->write( lc_context_error->get_text(  ) ).
    ENDTRY.

    TRY.
        me->logic( ).

      CATCH cx_root INTO DATA(lc_error).
        "handle exception
        write( 'Error occured in executing the logic:' ).
        write( lc_error->get_text(  ) ).
        DATA(previous) = lc_error->previous.
        IF lc_error->previous IS BOUND.
          write( name = 'Previous' data = lc_error->previous->get_text(  ) ).
        ENDIF.


    ENDTRY.

    out->write( |Done at { getcurrentdateandtimeformatted(  ) }| ).

    horizontalline( out ).

  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD write.

    DATA(descr_ref) = cl_abap_typedescr=>describe_by_data( data ).

    IF name IS INITIAL.

      IF descr_ref IS INSTANCE OF cl_abap_elemdescr.
        out->write( data = |{ getcurrentdateandtimeformatted(  ) }: { data }| ).
      ELSE.
        out->write( data = |{ getcurrentdateandtimeformatted(  ) }:| ).
        out->write( data = data ).
      ENDIF.

    ELSE.
      IF descr_ref IS INSTANCE OF cl_abap_elemdescr.
        out->write( data = |{ getcurrentdateandtimeformatted(  ) }: { Name }:{ data }| ).
      ELSE.
        out->write( data = |{ getcurrentdateandtimeformatted(  ) }: { Name }:| ).
        out->write( data = data ).
      ENDIF.
    ENDIF.
  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD getcurrentdateandtimeformatted.
    DATA tsp TYPE tzntstmps.
    DATA(lo_unix_timestamp) = xco_cp=>sy->unix_timestamp( ).
    DATA(lo_moment) = lo_unix_timestamp->get_moment( xco_cp_time=>time_zone->user ).
    tsp = lo_moment->as( xco_cp_time=>format->abap )->value.
    rv_dateandtime = |{ tsp TIMESTAMP = USER }|.
  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD horizontalline.
    out->write( repeat( val = '-' occ = 120 ) ).
  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD convertuuid.
    DATA(lo_uuid) = xco_cp_uuid=>format->c36->to_uuid( str ).
    rv_uuid = xco_cp_uuid=>format->c32->from_uuid( lo_uuid ).
  ENDMETHOD.

ENDCLASS.

Summary

The improved class runner is a tool that supports SAP NetWeaver, SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP, ABAP environment, basically everywhere the class runner is supported.

I put in a function for UUID conversion that I used in one of my last projects a lot, of course its optional.

It would be easy to extend this logic for application job execution too. All you need is an additional wrapper that rewrites the write method to append an application log and calls the logic method from the application job.

Feel free to share, reuse and enhance this idea.

If you like this post or it helped you, don't hesitate to give kudos.

Customer & Partner Roundtable for SAP BTP ABAP Environment #12

2024-04-24T20:33:53.136000+02:00

👉 The call for contributions for one of the upcoming roundtables is open!

If you want to show a demo or share a use case scenario for SAP BTP ABAP Environment send us an email and we will get back to you.

Introduction

As SAP BTP ABAP environment (aka Steampunk) and ABAP Cloud became more and more popular inside and outside of SAP, there is a high demand for rolling out the latest product news and updates, asking questions, and of course showing demos.

💡 If you weren’t able to join one of our previous roundtables, you can find the slides presented, recordings, and further references in this GitHub repository.

Meeting Information

When:

May 23rd, 10:00 - 11:00 AM CET – Zoom Meeting (please register in advance)

Who:

All interested customers, partners, and stakeholders are invited to join and exchange ideas and feedback with others and the product team
Steampunk team: Frank Jentsch (Product Lead for SAP BTP ABAP Environment), Anne Keller (Chief Development Experts ABAP Cloud Dev Tools), Thomas Alexander Ritter (Area Product Owner ABAP Cloud Dev Tools), Iwona Hahn & Burcu Karlidag (BTP ABAP Product Manager)

Preliminary Agenda:

Product news
New features of 2405 release
E2E Developer Experience for ABAP Cloud incl. demo
Q&A

Looking forward to meeting you!

Check out our SAP Business Technology ABAP Environment page in SAP Community for product updates and upcoming events.

SAP BTP, ABAP in the Cloud Custom Code Transformation using abapGit and gCTS

2024-04-26T09:09:05.666000+02:00

abapGit and gCTS (Git-enabled Change and Transport System)

The basic idea behind abapGit is to exchange source code between any ABAP systems using a Gitbased repository.

By introducing gCTS, SAP is aiming for the best of both worlds, that is, repository-based
development where concurrent work on the same object is possible, while retaining all the benefits of
central development.
Following is the process flow for gCTS.

You can use gCTS to distribute your custom code through a central repository, which will enable
possible rollbacks before importing to the target system, if required.
You can possibly use abapGit to move your on-premise ABAP objects to SAP BTP, ABAP
environment. In the next section, we’ll demonstrate how to use abapGit to move ABAP objects from
your SAP S/4HANA on-premise environment to SAP BTP, ABAP environment.

Custom Code Transformation Using abapGit

Transforming on-premise ABAP code to SAP BTP requires three primary steps.
- Evaluating current code.
- Installing abapGit.
- Transforming code.

Evaluation of On-Premise code for Compatibility

Make sure that your code is using the ABAP for SAP BTP language version (ABAP for SAP Cloud
Platform).
Once the language version is changed, execute ATC check or transaction SCI to check for any issues.

Installing abapGIT on an On-Premise and as an Eclipse Plugin

On-Premise

Create a new repository on GitHub.

Give a name to the repository and click the “Create Repository” button

Visit https://github.com/abapGit/abapGit and click on the latest build as follows. This simply has the
code for an ABAP report program.

Create a report program on your on-premise SAP system and copy the code you see above into the
program and activate.

The following screen should appear once you execute this program

abapGit has now been installed on the on-premise system

As an Eclipse Plugin

Open ADT->Help->Install new software and enter the following URL to load abapGIT for ABAP
development on ADT.
http://eclipse.abapgit.org/updatesite/
Simply click on “Next” and install the plugin

Transform code form on-premise to cloud

Visit your GitHub repository and copy the URL corresponding to your repository.
Go back to your ABAP report program on the on-premise system, Click new online.
Paste the URL you copied above to the following location, along with the package that you want to
commit to the Git Repository you created above. This is the package that is in your on-premise
system, which you want to migrate to the cloud environment.

Click on “Create Online Repo”.
Once the execution is completed, you should see the cloned repository as follows, which is ready to
be committed to the online Git Repository.

Now click on “stage” and “commit all changes” to the online repository

Give a comment for the commit that you do each time as follows. Click on “Commit”

This will request for your GitHub credentials, to authenticate. Give them and Continue.

Once the commit is complete, you should see a message as follows

And the source code under the package should be available in your online Git Repository.

Open ADT on Eclipse-> Select Your ABAP in the cloud Project -> Window -> Show -> Other ->
abapGit Repositories.
Click the “Plus” button to link your abapGit Repository to ADT. Give the URL corresponding to your
Git Repository here as well.

Create a package in your ABAP in the cloud project, to which you will be importing all the supported
objects in your on-premise ABAP package. Here I have given the same package name.
Make sure to put the “Pull after link” tick as well, so the objects will be pulled from your online Git Repository into ABAP in the cloud project.

Once that is completed, you should see all supported objects on your on-premise system, imported
into your ABAP in the cloud package.

Get started with SAP BTP ABAP Environment: Trial Account vs. Free Tier Option

2024-04-26T15:24:35.800000+02:00

Understanding the various Try and Buy options is crucial in exploring the SAP BTP ABAP Environment, ensuring an easy start to your journey. Let's take a closer look at the two tryout options:

Trial Account

The SAP BTP trial allows you to experiment and educate yourself and get familiar with the SAP BTP ABAP Environment. The instance is shared between all trial users. This shared trial offering allows users to share an instance, where all development objects are visible and editable by other trial users. You agree not to upload any personal data, any confidential information of you or your company, or use the service for a productive environment. By default, the trial account lasts for 30 days but can be extended up to 90 days. After this period, the instance is automatically deleted, and a seamless transition to a paid standard version isn't feasible. Due to the shared instance approach, a few features like connectivity are not supported. Please find more information in this blog post.

Free Tier Option

Designed for small proof-of-concept projects, the free tier option offers exploration of all capabilities for non-productive scenarios over a fixed 90-day trial period. It can also be utilized for piloting remote ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) scenarios against on-premise systems in the Custom Code Migration App. Unlike the trial version, each user has their own instance. A seamless transition to the paid standard plan is supported within the trial period, without data loss. After 90 days, the instance is automatically deleted.

Selecting the appropriate choice

To choose the right option between the trial account and the free tier option, consider your specific needs and goals:

Category	Trial Account	Free Tier Option
Purpose	Experimentation, educational purposes	Small proof-of-concept projects, non-productive scenarios
Feature Set	Limited	Not limited
Duration	Extendable up to 90 days	Fixed 90-day trial period
Data Privacy and Security	Shared instance	Individual instance
Seamless Transition	Not possible	Possible

Please evaluate these aspects and consider your future beyond the trial period to determine which option aligns best with your needs.

Introducing the New E-learning ‘Clean Core with SAP Business Technology Platform’

2024-04-29T15:06:39.391000+02:00

Clean Core is both a concept and an approach to achieve a modern, flexible, and cloud-compliant ERP system. Clean core is achieved by integration and extending the system in such a way that it is cloud-compliant, with optimal master data quality and perfected business process governance. Leveraging SAP Business Technology Platform enables you to attain clean core compliance, facilitating a smooth and effective digital transformation journey for your business.

The upcoming e-learning course, "Clean Core with SAP Business Technology Platform," offers valuable insights to understand how SAP Business Technology Platform can help cultivate a cleaner and more sustainable core for SAP systems. It offers insights into how SAP BTP can support the fundamental pillars of Data, Integration, and Extensibility.

The e-learning explores the topic of extensibility in-depth and how the various components of SAP Business Technology Platform support the building of extensions in line with clean core principles. This aspect is crucial for businesses looking to adapt and customize their SAP systems without compromising the integrity of their core.

Additionally, the course will advise on the key offerings available to customers through their SAP Enterprise Support, cloud edition subscriptions. This will equip participants with the necessary resources and support to ensure they are using SAP BTP components in line with SAP's clean core strategy.

Please use this link to access the e-learning.

If you have issues accessing the above link, there may be an authorizations issue. Please note a one-time registration in SAP Learning Hub, edition for SAP Enterprise Support, is required. A detailed step-by step guide to registration can be found here.

For internal colleagues, if you cannot access the e-learning, please use the following link, click on “Access” and use the above direct link once access has been granted.

Enroll now and join us as we explore the power of SAP Business Technology Platform in driving a clean core environment for businesses. Get ready to unlock new opportunities and drive innovation with SAP's clean core strategy.

Thanks and Regards,

Sudha Surendran / BTP Architect - SAP Enterprise Support

It's never been easier to invoke Machine Learning and Generative AI from an ABAP application

2024-05-03T08:34:43.224000+02:00

We have exciting news for SAP developers! You may remember that last year, IBM and SAP jointly announced a milestone collaboration around embedding AI into SAP solutions. One visible outcome was the adoption of Watson technology in the SAP Start and SAP Joule digital assistants.

And at the same time, IBM's been working on creating a watsonx Software Development toolKit (SDK) for SAP ABAP, complementing the existing Watson SDK that was refreshed in 2023.

I am pleased to confirm that the watsonx ABAP SDK version 1.0.0 is now live. It was released late March 2024 by the IBM SAP Software Engineering Team as expected. It is a separate release from its relative, the Watson SDK, who released a version 2 in Q4 2023. Both SDKs are open source and downloadable from GitHub.

If you develop SAP apps or have clients doing so, this is big news. It is truly a revolution in easily integrating Machine Learning and Generative AI, in just a few clicks, into an SAP ABAP application. Literally in 10 minutes!

The watsonx SDK comes in two flavors, allowing SAP developers to easily access watsonx from an ABAP application in a traditional SAP NetWeaver environment, and also in the latest SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP):

The SDK natively supports both the watsonx.ai (V1) and the Watson Machine Learning (V4). To get developers up to speed quickly, comprehensive examples are included in both of the APIs' documentation.

The sample code for the watsonx.ai sends a AI prompt to a generative AI model and collects the generated response. It uses the granite-13b-chat-v2 in the example but there are many other superb models available through watsonx.
The sample code for the Watson Machine Learning API lets you unleash the full capability of Watson Machine Learning (ML):
- Without going too far in the detail, to use watsonx ML you have to create a watsonx deployment space. This is where you will deploy your ML assets, which can be models, functions, or scripts.
- Python is a popular language for functions, in fact most frameworks in Watson ML rely on Python (or R). With a Python function, you can perform any ML task like creating, training, and using models.
  - For instance you can recognize hand-written digits, or to predict business area for a car rental company, etc.
  - You're welcome to write your own Python functions from scratch but in most cases you'd want to leverage existing example notebooks to save time
- Going back to the watsonx ABAP SDK: in the supplied sample code, the ABAP application deploys arbitrary Python code as a Python function on a watsonx deployment space and calls the deployed function. It also supplies a CURL command that can be used to easily call the deployed function from the command line
- So the SDK connects lets you use the full capabilities of watsonx ML with very little development effort. Then no further SAP programming knowledge is necessary, you can refer to the regular watsonx ML documentation. And of course, reuse the many examples of functions, models, and scripts provided by IBM and third parties.

See also the post by @christian_bartels on the same topic.

Lets Send multipart/form-data to external Receiver: CPI to AI App

2024-05-08T17:41:14.873000+02:00

Let me start the story with the requirements I had then Ill come to the approach I opted and in the journey it is possible that I may have done some mistakes so I'll add a humble request to all my senior fellow to add there expertise in this blog, This will help everyone to get more insights.

Scenario:

We had to integrate an application which had a requirement to connect to and External AI application that has exposed some API to us with some documentation.

Challenge:

From the initial thoughts this looks easy, it just an API, as so as I thought , but as I mentioned above "documentation" gave us the real challenge. To complete all the call we had to send the multipart/form-data to this receiver.

Through the help of documentations we are able to successfully send the data from Postman. but when we tried to send it from CPI we faced challenges which lead us to the solution. So next I am sharing the steps we performed to send the form-data

Clearly, if such problem arrives instantly we come to SAP community and search for the answer, we found https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-q-a/sending-form-data-from-sap-cpi/qaq-p/12613755 solution that gives us a way and describe what form-data is and how well it can be passed- but solution given here was to change the type of data itself which was not a choice for us.

At least we got half way on understanding the way multipart/form-data will be constructed. To understand more about terms and functionality please refer this wonderful article https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/what-is-form-data-and-how-to-send-it-from-sap-cloud-platform-integration/ba-p/13443126 by mattisebastian this will help us to create the exact frame of data we need to post and in correct way and how much important the envelope is.

Solution:

To Solve this it is very important to understand the few terms like Content-type, Content Disposition, Accept, Boundary and all the fields that are required in Form data.

To understand this format we had to mimic the Postman request we were directly send to API.

So we created a CPI Artifact to trace the look of the form data and we were able to get the exact same results as in screenshot , but we have to append an actual JSON which had a list of json data in format of string <binary> (File). And that was actually a file upload (that we were doing from postman).

till now if we send request without this JSON file, the AI app was accepting the request but with an error as no real data was found in envelope.

So now we had to find a way to send this file in Realtime to the receiver. and for that we tried various ways like to store the payload in data store and creating Tables and so on.

But issue persisted when we have to send it in Realtime. So to get a bit more Idea we again sent this request from Postman to CPI and traced it.

To get these headers understanding we also put some effort to create Multipart/Form-data from MIME script from the blog https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/part-6-simplify-integration-of-data-from-sap-s-4hana-cloud-to-third-party/ba-p/13386862 from divyamary

and we created following results:

So now we know how the file data look like and what part in payload we are missing, as we had to send the binary data we changed the header Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit to

Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary and same goes for file name.

and that's it.. it worked! Just some correction on payload customization and headers and we created multipart/form-data in Content Modifier only.

Briefs and Take-aways:

Mimic Postman Hits in CPI by artifacts , hit to CPI and traces the payload.
Set the Headers correctly specially Content-type and Boundary(specially spaces 🙂 )
Check if there is any media type for the type of data you are trying to send to receiver and set it correctly.
You can also try the MIME multipart script to simulate the outcome, it will give you some correct data formats and header options.
Add those steps and create a right payload in Content modifier.
After creating the form data always try to create a right envelope with right boundary (that worked for us)
Send with right adaptor configurations and ... it will be success.

Following are some key blogs from experts which we referred. a big thank them .

It was just my first blog so it will definitely have some misses, please add you comments and feedback so that ill improve.

Sap community is a Big sea and its just a drop that I added.

Thank you.

Be a Cockroach: A Simple Guide to AI and SAP Full-Stack Development - Part I

2024-05-09T19:14:30.935000+02:00

Disclaimer: This blog delves into SAP full-stack development, incorporating SAP RAP for both front-end and back-end functionalities, Integration Suite for middleware tasks, TensorFlow for AI/ML modeling, and crafting a personalized system dashboard. Geared towards simplifying complex business systems through engaging stories, it's for those wanting to understand these concepts. If you're already well-versed, feel free to just stop here and explore other content.

I) Introduction (Story):

Most people came here to see what he has to say about cockroaches and their connection to SAP development. Some might be curious to learn about it. Few of you could feel grossed out and think cockroaches are yucky and ugly! But after reading this section, I hope you'll respect these special creatures called “COCKROACH”.

The world is more than 200,000 years old. Lots of animals have lived and expired over time. One of them was dinosaurs—they were huge and strong. Due to changes in the tectonic plates and environment, the Dinosaurs couldn't survive and disappeared. Now, you can see it in movies using computer-generated effects. However, cockroaches have been around for over 1,00,000 years and you can still come across them in your kitchen, living room, bathroom, trash can, and everywhere else. Cockroaches have adjusted to changes in their surroundings, which is why they still exist on the planet.

Even though companies produce items like HIT and Baygon to kill them, cockroaches survive by figuring out how to deal with those products. A study found that certain products cause some cockroaches to behave as if they're intoxicated. Their bodies adapt to these substances. This ability to change is known as adaptation.

There aren't any charities or groups dedicated to protecting cockroaches like there are for elephants and dolphins. Everyone wants to kill cockroach, yet these humble cockroaches keep on living and undefeated by human, and their existence is inevitable. Now that you understand, I trust you hold a greater appreciation for the modest cockroach. Similarly, Consultants must also adjust to shifts in market trends.

The IT market is going through changes like "Artificial Intelligence" and a higher demand for “SAP Full-Stack developers” and so on. In this blog we are go-through about SAP Full-Stack development.

(The story about cockroaches was inspired by a book called "11 Rules for Life" written by Chetan Bhagat)

II) Agenda:

Getting to Know SAP FullStack: Understanding the Full Stack
Background Insights: Delving into the Story Behind
System Design Visualization: Seeing the Technical Architecture
Practical Implementation: Learning the Practical Details Step-by-Step
Wrapping Up: Summarizing Key Points and Looking Ahead
Further Reading: Offering Links to More Research Materials

III) Getting to Know SAP Full-Stack: Understanding the SAP Full-Stack development

Many of our consultants believe that full stack development involves only front-end and back-end development. However, when it comes to SAP development, there's a third component: middleware.

In today's market, relying on just one system isn't enough. Data comes from various sources, and we need to consolidate it to generate reports. So, if you're interested in becoming an SAP full-stack developer, this blog will help you understand the basics of all three elements: front-end, middleware, and back-end, and explain them practically.

Fig1: Basic diagram for Full-Stack development

IV) Background Insights: Delving into the Story Behind

Sundhara Pandian is a big part of Kotravai Coffee Group in Queenstown, New Zealand. He makes really good coffee. His trick? He gets top-notch coffee beans by following a careful process.

Instead of just buying beans whenever he wants, Sundhara Pandian sends a request called a Purchase Order (PO) to a big coffee supplier in Bremen, Germany. But it's not as simple as filling out a form. The PO has to go through a smart system with AI and automation. This system checks the beans in the supplier's stock and confirms the order.

But Sundhara Pandian's job doesn't stop there. The results from the system are put into SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This helps keep track of orders and how much coffee is left.

Basically, Sundhara Pandian does more than just make coffee. He's good at handling complicated systems to make sure Queenstown always has enough beans for coffee lovers.

Let's dive into SAP full-stack development through Sundara Pandian's story as we build the SAP RAP App for PO cockpit, iFlows and AI/ML model.

V) Technical Architecture Diagram: Visualizing the System Design

Fig2: Architecture diagram for E2E – Full Stack development with SAP applications

VI) Technical Implementation: Step-by-Step Integration Details

AIM: (Custom Cockpit and Integrated Goods Receipts):

We're making a simple app for custom Purchase Orders (PO) with basic fields.
Obtaining the GR information electronically, then utilizing a machine learning algorithm to automatically update the GR within our application system (GR automation).
We're getting details about Goods Receipts (GR) from GR automation system and showing them in the custom PO form.

Target Audience:

Individuals with 0 to 4 years of experience in SAP.
Enthusiastic learners eager to explore new concepts and expand their knowledge base.

Before proceeding, please ensure the following prerequisites are met:

Familiarity with basic concepts of SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP RAP.
Activation of the ADT-Eclipse, Postman, Integration Suite API plan in your SAP BTP entitlement.
Understanding of fundamental AI and Automation concepts.
Knowledge related to Python, Javascript, System landscape and UI

Step 1: Install the ADT package in the Eclipse. You can refer the below link to download the ADT package in the eclipse.

ADT Link: https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#abap

Step 2:

Step two has been divided into two sections, each detailed below:

Section-A: Connect to the S/4 HANA Cloud system.
Section-B: Create the modelling with SAP RAP

Go to help-> About Eclipse IDE -> Double check the below highlighted icon from your system.

Section-A: Connect to the S/4 HANA Cloud system

To connect the S/4 HANA Cloud system, please use the below steps.

Type the S/4 HANA Cloud web address: https://<Host>.s4hana.cloud.sap. Remember, select client 80. This client is used for making changes to the system.

Click the "Copy Logon URL to Clipboard" button. Then, open your web browser and paste the URL there. Enter your login details and press enter. After successful login, you'll see the screen below.

Click "Finish" and create your own package name. I've used "ZDEMO" here.

Part 1: Key Takeaway:

Gaining foundational knowledge of systems and landscapes through story-based learning.
Grasping the fundamentals of full-stack development with diagrams
Setting up Eclipse for SAP ADT and establishing a connection to the S/4 HANA Public Cloud system.

Part 2: Coming soon - Keep an eye out for an exciting story-based learning journey as we delve into creating SAP RAP applications.

Part 3: Coming soon - Embark on an exploration of AI and ML with our forthcoming model, create system with a dashboard for ( GR Automation )

Part 4: Coming soon - Learn how to connect the circuit using Integration Suite in our upcoming installment.

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