SAP Basis and SAP Security Support on Demand at a fixed price
Consulting regarding the use of hardware, database as well as operating systems and their installation type (physical or virtual)
Tasks such as the update of components, the insertion of security updates or monitoring should be further automated. It is recommended to use only one automation tool (SAP Solution Manager or SAP LVM). Custom solutions and scripts should not be used or replaced with standard tools if possible, because otherwise different script languages and script versions will have to be managed, resulting in a lot of maintenance. Standardised SAP scripts are welcome here. A useful definition of thresholds, for example on the basis of historical system behaviour, must also be defined for monitoring.
Transporting transport orders from one system line to another or importing third-party transport orders into the SAP system is also an occasional task for an SAP basis administrator. As in my last blog post on system modifiability, I would like to offer you a way to quickly present this topic. So you will find a step-by-step guide which you can follow if you have already understood the content of the topic, but only the steps need to be taken. What are the requirements? Transport orders include two files, titled "data" and "cofiles". These files consist of a six-character alphanumeric combination and a file extension, which often represents the system from which the files were exported. The first character is always a K (the cofiles file) or an R (the data file). For our example we call the files K12345_DEV and R12345_DEV. These files are of course needed for an import into your own SAP system. Furthermore, you need access to the file system or the SAP directories, as they have to insert the above files there manually. In addition, the transaction STMS is required in the SAP system because it attaches the transport orders to the import queue. Now, if you have all of this available, we can start with the import: What is the procedure? Operating System Level Preparation. The first step is to copy the files to the transport directory of the SAP system. This is usually below /usr/sap/trans, but can be changed individually depending on the system. If you want to make sure that you are working in the correct directory, you can look in the transaction AL11 to see which directory is specified under "DIR_TRANS". This is the right directory to work on. Here the existing files are copied into it, namely the cofiles file (K12345_DEV) in the cofiles folder (/usr/sap/trans/cofiles) and the data file (R12345_DEV) in the data folder (/usr/sap/trans/data). Note: In this case, especially for companies with multiple systems on multiple servers, the access permissions and the file owner need to be changed so that the import in the target system does not cause problems.
Technical implementation and typical tools in the SAP Basis environment
The SAP Patch Manager (SPAM) is the online correction support (OCS) customer site. The SPAM transaction gives you the ability to easily and efficiently import support packages provided by SAP into your system. Depending on the system used or the configuration of your system, you must insert different types of Support Packages [page 8]. You will receive support packages in SAPNet - Web Frontend, in SAPNet - R/3 Frontend or on Collection CDs. Since SPAM runs within the SAP system, you do not need to know the operating system to handle the transaction. In the language usage of SAP, the term patch has been replaced by the term support package. Note that you can only work with this transaction in SAP GUI for Java and SAP GUI for Windows.
The database layer manages all data in the R/3 System. It contains the database management system (DBMS) and the actual data.
Some missing SAP basic functions in the standard are supplied by the PC application "Shortcut for SAP Systems".
Here it is necessary not to overwhelm the own employees within the SAP basis and to keep the complexity of different topics and technologies manageable per capita.
Improved performance reduces runtime and hardware utilization.