SAP ABAP Local Transaction Analytics
@Vipin M V @Sridhar Venkatesh
SAP ABAP sensor is designed to monitor SAP Systems in a non intrusive manner without the need to import any packages or modules into SAP system. Instana supports both local and remote monitoring of SAP ABAP systems. For more information, see monitoring SAP systems.
TCode Analytics, is a new addition to our SAP observability offering where no additional steps are required to existing configuration.
You can monitor the SAP system transactions (Tcodes) by using Instana’s Tcode Analytics feature. In the Service tab in the Applications section of Instana, all the Tcodes that are executed on a system are grouped into a single service with the system name. Each Tcode is an endpoint within the service, and you can view its execution metrics - throughput and latency in the service dashboard. You can filter the data in the dashboard for further analysis by using Instana’s unbounded analytics. These analytics dashboards can showcase metrics for both RFC and http calls. In Instana, the HTTP requests are categorized as HTTP task type and RFC calls are categorized as the RPC task type.
Example:
The IL4 SAP system is monitored by using the SAP ABAP sensor. All the Tcodes that are executed are grouped into IL4 service as shown in the following image. Click IL4 to view the various metrics of the Tcode such as calls, latency, and detailed execution time.
Figure 1.
In the Service dashboard, all TCodes that are associated to the IL4 SAP system, the summary of the calls, and the latency of all the TCodes are displayed. You can visualize the metrics for a specific TCode from the Endpoints Tab or by clicking a specific TCode in the Top Endpoints widget. Instana has a built-in event to alert the user about the issues associated with the TCode execution. You can view the issues that are associated with the TCode execution by clicking the Issues button.
Figure 2
You can click the Analyze Calls button to get into the Unbounded Analytics section. In the Analytics section, you can use filters to drill down into TCodes executed by specific users and even select reports that are executed by that specific user.
A few analytics examples are:
- Group all users who have executed a specific Tcode.
- Group all Tcodes executed by a specific user
- Show all the Tcodes executed in a specific SAP system.
Figure 3
You can click a specific TCode to view detailed metrics and breakdown of its execution time as shown in the following figure. A TCode is visualized as a destination endpoint for the service corresponding to the SAP system. Since this example was an RFC execution, the category RPC is assigned to it. The panel on the right shows the breakdown of the execution time into Roll in, Roll out, Database time, and Work process (code execution) time. Breaking down the response time will help users determine how much time is spent on each stage of execution, allowing them to pinpoint where the time was actually used.
Figure 4
Events and Alerts
The Tcode throughput and latency data are available to be used in Instana Smart Alert feature. This enables detecting abnormal conditions and alerting through configured channels for immediate attention or even automated remediation. Adaptive thresholds can also be set in these smart alerts that evolve and adjust themselves continuously based on new data.
The following figure shows an email alert triggered from smart alerts on slowness of a Tcode execution that has exceeded a static threshold set to 3000ms.
Figure 5
Clicking on the ViewEvent button in the email launches the Instana UI where further details regarding the alert can be seen for analysis. It will show the time at which the threshold has been breached and the current trend as shown in the following figure.
Figure 6
The Analyze calls button will then take you to the Analytics page for this problematic call where the details regarding its breakdown will be shown for identifying the cause for the delay, and also its related infrastructure context in the local agent monitoring mode.
Conclusion
This blog shows how local ABAP transactions within a SAP system is monitored and visualized in Instana using Unbounded Analytics features.. A series of blogs will be published soon to showcase different use cases of how Instana provides deeper insights into SAP TCode executions.
Reference
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/instana-observability/current?topic=technologies-monitoring-sap-abap-sensor-beta