SUPPORT

BASIS SUPPORT:It is a activity provided by basis consultants to ensure that the run
time of sap applications are not affected .precisely to provide high availability to
the sap applications.
TYPES OF SUPPORT: 1.on site support
2.Right shore support
3.Off shore support
On site support: Consultants directly work with the customer(on site team)
It is proven to be more costlier because the charges will be around 100 to 200
dollars per hour
But the advantage is interactive communication with the data center and resolve
the issues on the floor by involving the teams like OS,Database,Network and
other third part agencies.
Customers can have one or more onsite consultants depending up on the
cricality of the business
Example : Ge, Hp, IBM, Kodak, Hcl and P&G deputes 3 consultants round the
clock(24*7) to monitor and administer the systems
They are also called as customer service executives who interacts with
customers and upgrade the statuses from time to time
Onsite can be a permanent support or knowledge transfer 1month or for a
specific activity
Note: The customer service executive may be different than basis consultant
depending up on number of team members going to be deployed
Right shore : Pool of consultants available in the shore but not with the customer

Example : Satyam,Wipro,Intelligroup manages resources from

their officers and provide remote
support ,oncallsupport or issue based support

This methodology is to ensure the consultants are available onsite

to serve the customers(24*7)
and reduce the lead times of identifying the consultants (visa processing and
travel)
Off shore: It is the most cost effective technology from where the consultant can
support the
customers from off shore

The offshore charges varies from 18$ to 30$ per hour

The major challenge is 1. Data security

2. connectivity
3.communication 4.team management
Datasecurity : Each consultant has to sign non disclosure agreement saying that one
of the document or customer data is not propagated or leave it.
Customer provides role based security to the consultant an\d ensure that they can
access only the content which is required by them.
Connectivity : It is basic dialog connections .broadband,leaselines provide
connectivity to customer environment .
It is to ensure uninterrupted connectivity.

We need to have atleast 2 connectivities from two different locations.so that we can
have a disaster site and backbone connectivity.
Wirless connectivity :It is also provided so that consultant work from home.
Communication with CSE: It can be through E mails ,verbal or fax
Keep the communication as simple as possible.
Team management : work collaboratively with the team.
Share the knowledge.
Hand shake of issues between shift change over.
SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT : It is the agreement that is signed between
customer and the support partner.
It contains scope of work along with severity and priority levels ,costing, nature of
bid, responsible persons escalation levels,penalty clauses,time of support ..etc.
Scope of work : It covers the list of activities that needs to be supported by the
support manager
Example : monitoring the database backup,performing transports,user creation,user
transport,user locking and unlocking .etc.
We need to identify inscope and outscope activities and inform the customer service
executive from time to time.
Example :Os patches,Database patches,Os,Db upgrade,SAP installation, hardware
migration.
Project pricing : the project can be priced in any one of the following ways.

Ticket based

Issue based

As per scope

Request based
Fixed bid : Customer pays a lumsum amount of 20,000 dollars/month along with
fixed SLA.
Time and material : It can be coupled with above options to handle out scope
activities.
Example : CRM installation consumes ten hours can be billed at a rate of 100
dollars per hour.
Roles and responsibilities : The roles and responsibilities of a support has to be
documented as per
SLA.
Proactive monitoring,preventive actions, reactive support based on run time issues.
We need to define the primary responsibility and secondary responsibility for each
of the task.

SAP Advantages :

It provides functionality to support various parts of the

business(manufacturing,sales,purchasing,quality management,finance,hr,plant
maintainance and project systems ..etc).

All the SAP applications are built on netweaver platform that is by

default we can have javaplatform,BIW,XI and enterprise portal(EP).

It provides multichannel access that is it can be accessed by using

SAPGUI ,intenet explorer/browser.

It provides rich set of industry extensions oil,mining,gas,insurance and

banking.

It provides to access the software in multiple languages(it is unicoded

language) to support 90,000 characters.

It can be installed on any one of the operating systems like

WINDOWS,IBM-AIX,HPUNIX,SUNSOLARIS,LINUX(redhat,SUSE),ORACLE-LINUX.

It supports all the available databases like ORACLE,MICROSOFT

SQL,SAPDB,DB2 and IBM UDB(universal database).that is why SAP is
platform independent and DB independent.

SAP is using JAVA language to provide the interactive content over the
web.

It
provides
various
interfaces
such
as
email,fax,printers(barcode,check,label) and handheld.

SAP provides add-ons, industry specific solutions and sap applications

like CRM,SRM,SCM.

SAP supports data transfer methods so that the data can be transported
from SAP to NONSAP and NONSAP to SAP.that is data which is available in
the legacy systems,Oracle apps,People soft,Seibel,Microsoft access,XL and
Flagfiles can be uploaded in to SAP.

SAP is consistent,reliable,stable with more than thousand customers.

SAP provides on line(24*7*365)support

Disadvantages :

Costbased on user license varies from 1,50,000-40,000 per user.

Too many realeases.(3.1 to ECC6).
SAP released more than 400 products more than software
components.
SAP only supports production systems and issues that are
prioritized as very high

SAP ARCHITECTURE:
R2 ARCHITECTURE: It is client server based where client requests and server
responds.

There are various disadvantages in this architecture which makes both client
and server to be an expensive in the areas.

The disadvantages of R2 architecture is over come by R3 architecture

R3 ARCHITECTURE: It consists of presentation server ,application server,and a
database server or layer.

It is also called as three tier architecture.

Now it is coupled with access and called as multi tier architecture.that is

webaccess,mobileaccess,GUI access at presentation server level.

PRESENTATION SERVER : It is a SAP GUI which is used to take the user

requests and submit to the application server.
DATABASE SERVER :It is used to process the request that are coming from
application servers.
APPLICATION SERVER : It accept the request from SAP GUI,WEB GUI,mobile
and process them accordingly.

It is an agent which is deployed between presentation and database server.

It consists of the following

1.Dispatcher
2.Dispatcher queue mechanism
3.Work process and their task handlers
4.Buffer area to store the frequently accessed data
5.SQL interpreters
DISPATCHER:There will be only one dispatcher per instance/application server.

It listens on port 3200+2 digit instance number .

Dispatcher manages, monitors and administers the instance.

Dispatcher has its own queue mechanism and process the

requests based on FIFO.

Dispatcher has its own dedicated physical memory,extended

memory and buffer areas.

Dispatcher
is
monitored
by
using
executable
DPMON(Dispatcher monitor).

Each dispatcher uses certain amount of memory and diskspace.

While handling the requests the process may hang in the

semaphore that is why SAP
recommends not to configure more than 100 work process
WORK PROCESS:These are use to process the user requests.

They are represented by w0,w1,w2,w3,w4--------------------wn1.

These are managed by dispatcher .

Each work process consumes around 75 to 150 Mb of memory

on an average.

The minimum usage can be 1Mb and maximum can be 2Gb on 32 bit
machines and 4Gb on 64 bit machines.

The maximum memory can be used by a work process is displayed by

memlimits.

Each work process can serve up to 5 to 10 users depending up on type of

users.

There are three types of users 1.low users 2.medium users 3.high users

Types of work process:1.Dialog 2.Update 3.Back ground 4.message server

5.enqueue
6.Gate way 7.Spool
TASK HANDLER :Each workprocess behaves as taskhandler and displayed as
TSKH in log files.

It contains three interpreters 1. Screen interpreter 2.ABAP

interpreter 3.SQL interpreter.
Buffer areas : The frequently accessed data and rarely changed data is stored in
buffers and improve the response time by 50%
DB CLIENT : It is used to communicate with database in native SQL language.

SAP uses open SQL to ensure that.

SAP products are DB independent .

While communicating with database server we need to communicate

nativeformat of database
.

Oracle listens only PLSQL commands.

SQL server listens TSQL commands

USER CONTEXT : User context is the area where user credentials are stored.

User context is specific to the user and it is deleted once the

user is logged off.

Transaction SU56 is use to display user context.

USER REQUEST FLOW:

User submits the request using presentation server.

The request is sent to application server using DIAG protocol.

Maximum of 20 Kb data allowed to transmit over the network.

The request is received by the dispatcher and placed in dispatcher wait

queue.

Dispatcher process the request based on FIFO(first in first out).

Dispatcher identifies the free work process and allocate the

process to it.

Work process has its own processed with a similar or matching process id at
OS level.

Dispatcher+work.exe runs at os level and utilizes c.p.u and memory based on

requirement.

The
work
process
taskhandler
process
the
request
using
interpreters(screen,abap,and sql,).

The workprocess inteprets the request and checks whether the content is
available in r3.

If the content is available, it fetches from R3 buffer .if not the request is sent to
database server and response is sent to R3 workprocess.

R3 work process checks if the content is eligible for buffering.if so keeps a

copy on the R3 buffers.

The workprocess rolls the user information in to user context.

The process of writing the response in to user context is known as

ROLLOUT.

The work process sends the response to user.

The entire communication should be completed with in 600ms.

FLOW 2:

User submits the request.

Dispatcher allocates the process to the user request .

Work process gets the user request information based on user id and rolls the
information in to task handler .

The process of copying the user context information in to task handler is

known as ROLLIN.
DIALOGSTEP: It is a mouse click or keyboard stokes such as f1,f2,f3,f4,enter or a
page film or selecting a menu entry on the screen.

Each dialog step is processed by a workprocess.

Each dialog step may not be a full fledged transaction .it is only a part of
transaction.

Each dialog step may result either a commit or rollback but can also be a
display
LOGICAL UNIT OF WORK(LUW): It is part of transaction which can be
committed or rollback.each LUW requires one or more dialog steps.
TRANSACTION: A transaction consists of one or more LUWs which can be
committed or rollback.

SAP considers sales order document production order argument for bench
mark a transaction .

Example : a sales order document consists of 8 to 12 dialog steps.

DIALOG PROCESS:It is the only interactive process that is use to communicate

with users.

There should be atleast two dialog process for each instance.

Dialog process serves the end users.

So, its run time is restricted to 600 secs to process more

requests.that is after 600 secs the process is timed out.

Dialog process takes the requests and initiates other process.

Dialog process updates the user context using rollin and

rollout.

Dialog process updates the temporary tables (vb* tables) which can
be updated by an upgrade process later.

Dialog process updates the batch tables (TBTCT,TBTCS) which

can be used by background process to schedule the jobs.

Dialog process updates the spool tables (tsp*,tst*) to share the

spool information which can be printed by spool work process.

Dialog process communicates with enqueue process to lock and

unlock the objects during an update.

Dialog process are defined by the parameter rdisp/wp_no_dia.

The minimum is two and maximum is 100.

Its run time is generated by parameter rdisp/max_wprun_time

which is restricted to 600secs

If the work process is timed out a log is created in transaction

SM21 along with a dump in ST22.
DIALOG PROCESS MULTIPLEXING:The process of serving more than one user
with out restricting to a user is multiplexing.
That a user needs around 8-12 dialog steps to complete a transaction that is each
step can be performed by a different work process of the same instance.

Performance Tuning Transactions

Performance tuning in the system can be done using a set of
monitoring transaction codes for the application, database, and
operating system. Table 22-2 lists the key performance tuning
transactions and a brief description for each.

TABLE 22-2 SAP Performance Tuning Transactions

SQL Trace Overview
The following procedure can be used to get a SQL trace in a SAP
system. SQL trace analysis will help us identify any expensive SQL
statements and identify tuning/indexing opportunities to improve
system performance.
Starting SQL Trace

The following procedure can be used to start a SQL trace for a program
that is causing performance issues in the system:
1. Call transaction code ST05. Select either Activate Trace or Activate
Trace With Filter. The Activate Trace option will start a SQL trace for
the user who started the transaction. Activate Trace With Filter will
provide different filtering options for capturing the SQL trace. Figure
22-2 provides the filtering options available for activating a SQL trace.
Choose the user account under which the problem SQL is running and
start the trace by clicking the green check mark.
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