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Showing posts from July, 2011

Certificates, Public key and Private Key

Public and private keys allow communication over a public network in a secure manner. Your public key can be shared with others with whom you wish to communicate and your private key remains a secret, only accessible to you. If one of the keys is used for encoding a message, it can only be decoded by the other key. This allows the following: 1. Your partner can encrypt a message with your public key and send it to you. Since this message can only be read by you by decoding it with your private key, you are assured that the message cannot be read by others standing between you and your partner. 2. You can encode a message with your private key; which when correctly decoded, confirms that the message was indeed sent by you and not an impostor. Encoding message with private key is known as signing. Similarly, you can use your partner's public key to encrypt data that is sent to them and decode data that you receive from them to confirm that the message is authentic. When you m

Tracing HTTP Response Time of Dispatcher and SAP J2EE Server Node

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You can trace the HTTP response time on dispatcher by enabling HttpTraceTime property. Similar information can be captured on SAP J2EE server node by enabling LogResponseTime property. These two parameters can be set in HTTP Provider service . The trace will be written at <path to>/j2ee/cluster/server0/log/system/httpaccess/responses.<n>.trc in the following format: [Jul 27, 2011 7:49:19 PM] - 127.0.0.1 : GET / HTTP/1.1 302 0 [ 150 ] d[ 300 ] c[30132] 150 ms shown in the trace refers to the response time of the server node. 300 ms shown in the trace refers to the response time of the dispatcher. If you want to capture additional details when the response time has crossed a certain threshold, you can set TraceResponseTimeAbove parameter in  HTTP Provider service . A negative value for this parameter will have no effect. Additional trace will be written in the default trace file when the response time is >= property's value and HttpProvider service i

Introduction to SAP XI Message Pipeline Processing

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An XI message is created when a Sender Communication Channel receives a payload either while listening to a source system or by polling (fetching) from a source system. The message will pass through several steps where the determination of its destination(s) and changes to its structure/values will happen. The Integration Engine processes the message in a step by step (pipeline) process. The following are the most important steps executed by the central pipeline: PLSRV_RECEIVER_DETERMINATION and PLSRV_INTERFACE_DETERMINATION The Sender CC is just the starting point. Based on the CC and the message, the group of objects (interface) involved in the processing of the message and the destination where the message ends up must be determined in XI. The receiver determination and interface determination steps find out the details of the receiver system and the interface for a message. The receiver can be a constant one or calculated dynamically based on the payload. PLSRV_RECEIVER_ME

Enabling Web Cache in SAP Web Dispatcher

When an http call is made, it is passed to the application server via the web dispatcher. If the same call is made repeatedly, the WD has to keep sending the same request to the application. There is some level of saving that can be made in the network bandwidth and usage of backend system by saving the fetched pages locally and serving the saved copies from the web dispatcher. Web caching is inactive by default. To activate the cache on a particular uri, add " icm/HTTP/server_cache_0 = PREFIX=<uri-prefix>, CACHEDIR=<dir> " in the web dispatcher profile.

J2EE Server Node in Starting Applications Status for Long Time

If you ever found the J2EE server node spending unusually long time in Starting Applications status, you may have tried to look into trace files and have found nothing really useful. In order to determine which application is taking long time, you may use telnet tool. 1. Call the telnet tool telnet <host name> <telnet port 5NN08> 2. Login as j2ee_admin (dual stack) or Administrator (java stack) 3. List the cluster nodes lsc 4. Jump to a server node jump <ID> 5. Go to deploy service add deploy 6. List all the applications that are currently starting list_app | grep starting Repeat step 6 until you can see that a particular application keeps showing up in starting status. You now have the application that is taking time to start. Take 3-4 java thread dumps (stack trace) with an interval of 30 secs using jcmon. Analysis of these thread dumps with special focus on the application that is in starting status can help you (or SAP support) identify the iss

What is SAP (HANA) In-Memory Computing

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A traditional analysis of large volume of data is usually slow because the application logic must fetch the data from database which is not stored entirely in memory. When a query is being processed on a large volume, the database instance swaps the rows back and forth from the file system. Disk reads (and writes) are slow. The analysis is typically done on columns (ex: sum of salary, total number of invoices etc), where are the operations store the data in a row-wise structure. Although the processing is required on a few columns (since the analysis involves summation, averages etc.) of data, all rows are required to be read. Even if several application or DB cluster nodes are installed, the entire query has to run on a single instance of the application or database. SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytic Application) provides database within memory. It uses columnar-databases (with this methodology, if one is working on aggregates, only the columns worth of data is read and is therefo

SAP's Global and Local Partners (Links to their Portals)

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http://www.daylife.com/photo/04EF6YcfZ8fdb SAP customers and consultants usually prefer working with SAP's service partners. Here is a list of SAP's partners. Accenture Atos Origin Capgemini Cognizant CSC Deloitte Fujitsu HCL AXON – SAP Services Division of HCL Hitachi – Hitachi Consulting HP IBM Global Business Services IDS Scheer Indra Infosys Ltd . itelligence L&T Infotech Logica Mahindra Satyam Neoris PwC Tata Consultancy Services T-Systems Wipro Limited

AE_EOIO_OPTIMIZE: New Mechanism for Handling EOIO Messages

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When EOIO messages are sent from Integration Engine to Adapter Engine, they may be sent to different J2EE server nodes by the web dispatcher based on the load. The J2EE engine communicate with each other to ensure that the messages are processed in the desired serial order. There is a performance overhead with the cluster communication, specially when there are a lot of EOIO messages. Administrators dealing with J2EE node restarts with Missed broadcast from Message Server can feel the pain. Good news is: The latest SPS on PI 7.1, 7.11 and 7.3 have introduced a mechanism to send the EOIO messages of a queue to a single J2EE engine and reducing the need for cluster communication. Bad news is: Due to a bug, this mechanism is not working well now and SAP is working on fixing it. It won't take time for SAP to come up with a better mechanism, meanwhile you can disable this (default) feature (on the above said SPS) by setting AE_EOIO_OPTIMIZE to 0 in SXMB_ADM --> Integration Engine

Permanently stopping programs from being added to Windows startup list

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Some programs are supposed to run from the point when you log into Windows and some are not so necessary, yet they are added to the list automatically. If you have deleted unwanted programs from the start list and see them added again after a few days, try WhatInStartup . Its "Permanent Disabling" feature can detect such additions and automatically delete them. Other features include google search feature to find more information on the selected program and disabling startup programs on an external (probably infected) Windows system.

Forgot Windows Admin Password--Reset with a 3 MB tool

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If you have lost your Windows Admin password and are looking for a free tool Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is the one for you. No need to download Ubuntu CD/DVD to just crack the password. This is a text based tool which can help you recover passwords on Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Vista. You can download the bootable USB/CD from http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html Follow these steps (with screen shots) to recover the password: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ss/ontpre-screenshot-guide.htm If you have an Ubuntu LiveCD , you can check these instructions out: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/resetwindowspassword/ Best Selling Software at Amazon: Microsoft Office 2010 Home & Student (Disc Version) Now you can easily post your Office documents online and access, share and edit them with Office Web Apps. It's an ideal way to extend your Office 2010 experience to the Web.

Stop Media Guide in Windows Media Player

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If you are annoyed with the Media Guide opening up every time you start Windows Media Player, you should know about this option. Go to Tools and select Options. Uncheck "Start Player in Media Guide" and save your changes. A lot of web sites suggest on blocking windowsmedia.com using the hosts file, but you still have Media Guide opening (of course with an error page). You could try that as well.

What is PI Cache Refresh?

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As we all know, the PI objects are created or edited using the Integration Builder tools. The development area is isolated from runtime area in PI. Changing or creating objects does not change or create them directly in runtime. Runtimes have their own database for storing the PI objects. Only the latest, active versions of the objects are available in runtime. When the PI objects are changed in IB, the changes are written as an xml message and sent to the runtime components  (ABAP Integration Server, Java Adapter Engine CPA cache, Java Message Mapping Cache and Java Value Mapping Cache). The runtime components read this message and make the adjustment to their versions of XI objects to keep the objects in sync with the recent changes. If for some reason the cache updates triggered by changes in IB fail, one can trigger a delta cache or a full cache refresh to keep the objects consistent using the URL  http://<pi-host>:<pi-j2ee-port>/CPACache/refresh?mode=delta

Installing and Configuring SAP Web Dispatcher for SAP XI

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Most installations begin with one application instance. If the instance number is NN, the http port will be 5NN000. With time, you may require more number of instances to scale with the growing requirements with increasing message volume. If you have installed an additional application instance MM, the instance listens to http requests on 5MM000 port. Most of your existing configuration would have been set to use 5NN000 http port. In order to balance load between instances NN and MM, you require a web dispatcher (WD) and update your configuration to use the WD. Before you install the WD, check SAP note 908097 to verify which release is supported for the release of the application installed. Extract the CAR files in a new directory where you want to install the web dispatcher and call this command sapwebdisp -bootstrap You will be prompted to give inputs Host name of the server where Message server instance runs (rdisp/mshost) Message server's HTTP port (ms/http_port: 81