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SAP AMERICA
Coordinator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the BW
only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session with
recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Oliver
O. Mayer Okay, thank you, Bill. This is Oliver Mayer, and first of all, I’d like to
thank everybody for dialing in today’s call and taking the time out of their
busy schedule to listen to this presentation and, of course, I’d like to thank
Rudolf Hennecke, my colleague out of the EMEA Rig out of Germany for
taking the time to put this presentation together and to take the time of his
So without further ado, I would like to turn the call over to Rudolf and the
R. Hennecke So, hello, everybody, to this conference call on modeling aspects and
process chain. Yes, first of all, I hope that everybody could download the
on how to model process chains and then we will have some time for
So let’s come to page one, which shows you the agenda of today’s conference call. You
will see that the conference call is divided in four blocks: a short, very
chains (means collecting processes and then building process chains out of
So let’s start with the introduction. We are now on page three. You’ll find the page
number in the upper-right corner of each slide. As you see, process chains
are built for administrating and automating the BW administration and this
means not only the data-load processes, which we could automate already
in BW 2.0 (using info package groups) but also all other administration
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Host: Margaret Anderson
May 15, 2003/10:00 a.m. CDT
Page 3
processes that might run after or even before loading data (like database
It means process chains are the central point of administrating for all
processes that need to run in BW before data can be made available for
end users. So therefore, on page four you find another definition on the
term “process” because in this presentation I will use the term process
A process is composed, as you can see, out of a process type and a variant,
means it is the for example the info package to be loaded. Or it is the info
You can see from this presentation that I will not talk in detail about the
operating BW 3.0 using process chains. In this conference call from 2002
you’ll find information on the tool itself and how to use it.
We are now on page six. Within the conceptual and project-related issues,
two points are very important. The first thing is that you have to think of
quite early in the implementation phase of the project, means right after
process chains five days before going live with your project.
Then, after having implemented your process chains, use the final
modeling on process chains, you really need to start with it early in your
project.
Next point is on project team and know-how and what I want to tell you is
that the project team members that work with process chain do not only
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Host: Margaret Anderson
May 15, 2003/10:00 a.m. CDT
Page 5
need to know about the tool, but also on data warehouse administration
and also the need to have knowledge on the single process types they start
and schedule in process chains. Means they need to know what the system
The other thing is that usually it’s very good to have central project teams implementing
these process chains. If this is not the case or if you need to work in
parallel and decentrally, then make sure that the different project teams
implementing process chains share their knowledge and that they also
Now on slide seven I give you prerequisites before starting implementing a scenario with
process chains.
to do periodically?
The next thing is data quality. Is the quality of data good enough that,
If this is the case for your data-load scenario, then you should first try to stabilize data
Last point: Is the availability of data foreseeable? Example is flat file loading; is it
foreseeable that a certain flat file is made available every week at the same
folder with the same name with the same data quality. And if this data
availability is not foreseeable, then also it is, as you can imagine, hard to
So therefore, if one of these questions applies, then you should work first on the
This means, as we can see on slide number eight, that you have to think of
support process chain implementation. Means you have to fix and you
have to discuss certain topics like data ownership and availability of data?
Means also support organization: who monitors the process chains and
Then, also, the next thing is that you have to give guidelines for process chain
The next thing, which should be included in such administration procedures, are, as you
development system to the test system. You test it then, and then you
tool like info packages are, but process chains are really something static,
production system.
Now let’s come to the next part in this presentation, and this is the part from processes to
process chains. We will now come to page number 11. In this chapter I
now I want to give you advice on how to collect relevant processes that
have to run within the process chain and then how to distribute these
First, you have to collect all processes that have to run before data can be
released to the end users. This is not only our data-load processes; it’s
Then when having all these processes, you have to think of what are the
time windows for my process chains? When can I start the process chain
during the night and when does it need to finish in order that data is
use some typical criteria for doing this. These criteria, you can find them
now on page 13 and page 14. The criteria I give there are ordered
according to their priority. Means that the first criteria, frequency, seems
process chains, so if one process needs to be scheduled daily and the other
needs to be scheduled monthly, then in 99% of the cases you need to build
once a week.
Next criteria that will help you, distributing processes to process chains, is the business
scenario, can lead to separate scheduling but is most of the time used for
teams and different support organizations for different business topics, for
Next criteria is the data type you load. Means whether loading master data or transaction
scheduled process chains but which will very often be used for creation of
sub chains: one sub chain for master data, another one for transaction data.
So next criteria on slide 14 is source systems. The type of source system might
And the last criteria applies for BW landscapes, where we find multiple
BW’s.
Usually, as you can see, as a final conclusion, process chain design and distribution of
on any data load, a process chain that does not need to include a data load,
then you might schedule this group of processes totally independent from
The next very, very, very important topic is that when then you can see how your
processes will be grouped to process chains that you have to see that the
not include all the processes you have in a single process chain because
when having over 100, 200 processes in one chain, then administration of
should think of then splitting up this very big chain in several sub chains.
The benefits you will then have is that you can better visualize
simplified.
To do this, as you can see, you can use the process type “local process
chain” which you can find in the process chain maintenance transaction
RSPC.
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Host: Margaret Anderson
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When doing this, you create a so-called process chain hierarchy. My recommendation on
processes hierarchies is that you should not have, in one hierarchy, more
Now we come to slide number 19 to the general modeling principles. As you can see,
there are five basic principles I will mention. On one hand, technical
cost as possible.
So now we are on page 20. First topic I want to talk about is how to avoid unwanted
The first example you can find there is on modeling the links in a process
chain that link processes to each other. The color of these links, should be
An example is that in some cases the failure on a single text load should not stop the
whole process chain. Therefore, in the good example, on the right side,
you see that the link between the text load and the attribute change run is
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Host: Margaret Anderson
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Page 13
modeled with green/red. Means the attribute change runs in all cases,
In order to use this green/red link, you should, as prerequisite, avoid the undefined yellow
The one is that you customize the traffic light colors in BW (customizing
transaction SPRO). The next customizing setting that might help you is
Next topic is on how to avoid unwanted dependencies on process chain level. The first
thing is that you should only use links between process chains or external
triggers to process chains when they are needed. In the example we have
probably not dependent on each other. They should not be linked together
in one meta chain but they should be simply scheduled at different times,
Then, when working with multiple BW production systems, you should think of which is
the leading system for triggering all processing. Is it like on the left side
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Host: Margaret Anderson
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Page 14
on slide 21, the start process in the global process chain, which is
finishing their processing and then signaling the global process chain that
Now we come to page 22 and it is about how to avoid lock situations. When having
that lock each other and that makes the process chain fail. On this slide
you will find some example on process types where locking can occur and
For example, the hierarchy and attribute change run which is temporarily
The other thing, which can happen, is that you use the waiting time -
which you can find in the context menu in the design view in the process
chain - that you use this waiting time for modeling purposes. It is not
meant for that. This waiting time you can set per process is used for
debugging a process, for making a job wait in order that you can debug it,
but it is not meant for modeling purposes. It makes the whole process
So now we come to page 23, and to avoid such lock situations you should
always carefully check warnings saying that the process is already used in
another chain. So the tool will signal you as soon as you use a process
Then finally, depending on the size of your system, you will have a
locking. Means the bigger your systems are, the more you have to work
And the smaller your system is, the more you have to work on maximum
other.
will now see within the next modeling principle on slide 24. There you
The other thing is that we can schedule two process chains at the same
time.
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Host: Margaret Anderson
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Page 16
But I want to you advise you with this slide that there are other ways of
parallelization on some process types, and this we will see on the next
slide, that a single process is already using more than one basis work
process.
So, as you can see on slide 25, on some process types you use in the
will achieve parallel dialog processes to be used during the run of the
process chain. Means that in that case, and only in that case, these process
types will split up dialog processes during the run of process chain. This
And on the next slide, just some information on the processing option in the info package
and its influence on using one batch process or parallel dialog processes
So next very important message on slide 26, is that you should model balanced parallel
tracks. Means you should investigate on the run time of a single process,
schedule the process chain and you should distribute your processes to
parallel tracks so that the difference between the end time of one track and
In this example we have, then, one parallel track running six minutes, another one
running seven minutes and the long attribute load on business partner will
run for eight minutes. This makes the AND only waiting for two minutes
Now we come to page 28, and there we have some important information
that whenever the chain gets executed, then the processes in the chain will
additional dialog processes. Means that you can count the number of
processes you can have at a time plus the number of parallel dialog
Next important message on this slide, on slide 28, is that if you specify no server on
which a process chain should run, then you use, as you know, SAP load-
balancing. This means that then the process chain will start running on the
resources are available on that instance, then the job will be converted to a
time-based job and will be started again by the next time scheduler. And
The other way of scheduling a process chain would be setting the background server
attribute in the process chain maintenance. This means that you define the
background server on which the whole process chain should run. So the
target server will be entered in each job when the process chain is
scheduled and then all the processes run on one background server.
Means that your whole processing might switch the background server from time to time
attribute or not is that you have to consider two important topics when
The first topic is when you have a comparably small system and when you
are short of base resources, then your most important consideration will be
Then you might set this background server attribute or then you might also set up
for nightly scheduling and another server with dialog processes used for
daily reporting.
If you have a sufficiently big basis system, then your most important topic
Then (and this applies to most of the cases) you will preferably use load balancing
because then you can make optimal use of your basis resources by
servers. Also then, you can guarantee that whenever one server is down
that then the other servers might take care of the process chains scheduling
Finally, you will then test every process chain on resource consumption and run time
before going live and then you can then enter it in a central and overall
scheduling overview, like you can see on page 31, and this overview will
then, for example, on process chain level, contain the available resources
Now, to come to an end, we now will have a short investigation on the last two points.
First, you have to guarantee also, in your process chains, the correct
Now we come to page 33 and there we see a proposed master dataload sequence of first
attributes, then hierarchies, then text, because text are not as important as
attributes and hierarchies because text loads do not require any change run
change run.
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have InfoPackage groups. When these are scheduled you have a lot of
flags on info package level on info cube maintenance level and an ODS
This flags have been replaced by according process types in the process
chains. Means that if an info package is started in the process chain, then
these flags are ignored and the respective process type must be scheduled
The overall message behind this is to say that it’s two different worlds.
One world is scheduling the InfoPackages and using the flags on object
level, and the other world is using process chains for scheduling.
Everything that has to run until the data is finally available should be part
of the process chains and you should not use for one administration
scenario, info package groups and process chains at the same time. And
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that you just use info packages only when you do ad hoc scheduling, like
you do when scheduling repair full uploads or when initializing data loads.
O. Mayer Thank you, Rudolf. Let’s open up the lines for questions and answers,
Bill.
Coordinator The first line will open as Frederick Pinchon at Orenso. Please go ahead.
F. Pinchon Yes, hello. There was a feature that I missed during the process chain.
It’s a feature picture. I would like to be able to type in for object name or
data target name and to find it in the maintenance of the process chain. Is
R. Hennecke Yes, that’s right. This is because the info object itself is not a process and
therefore you cannot see where the info object is used. I know what you
F. Pinchon Yes.
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R. Hennecke This is currently not available but I will mention this to our development.
Coordinator Thank you, the next line we’ll open is Chung Ching at Deloitte and
Touche, please go ahead.
C. Ching Hello. We have some question about restarts. When one of the process in
the process chains fail, is there any way the restart features when you right
mouse, left mouse kit, you can see that restart features but that one does
not work.
R. Hennecke Not all process types allow restarting and which process types allow
restarting can be seen in the process chain maintenance when you click in
the menu on settings, maintain process types. Then you can see all the
different process types and in the process type maintenance, there’s a flag
“restartable” and when this flat is set, then the process type can be
restarted.
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statistic)
R. Hennecke Yes, on page three the DB statistics process means, the DB statistics
update. But the question is whether you use this process or not depends
database statistics is done globally for the whole system. You might also
C. Ching Okay, last question is, anyway, you can provide the process chain copies
features?
R. Hennecke There is planned a process chain copy feature but currently it is not
available.
Coordinator Next line we’ll open is the line of Craig Handjian at Exxon/Mobil. Please
go ahead.
C. Handjian I’ve got two questions. The first question is expand a little bit more on
that copy feature. I wanted to ask, will they have something that will just
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Page 25
let us copy chain A to chain B or if you look at slide 16, where you have
the example of how to take a large chain and break it into two. Will you
be able to take a section of a large chain and remove it and copy it into
another chain? Because if I, I think now currently you’d have to delete all
the process variants from the larger chain and rebuild it, correct?
C. Handjian So will there be in that copy feature, would we be able to copy just a piece
of a larger chain?
R. Hennecke With the copy feature, it will be possible to copy the whole chain. This
means you will have this big chain twice and unfortunately, you still then
C. Handjian Yes.
C. Handjian Got you. My second question is with regards to the polling flat that you
talked about on slide 20. You did mention it takes up one additional batch
process. Can you talk about, does that pulling start when just one process
chain kicks off and it ends when all the process chains have succeeded?
Or how does that work in conjunction with the chains that are running in
your system?
R. Hennecke Then you should not set the polling flag on all process chains but only
where you want to have nearly 100% termination security. This is because
Coordinator The next line we’ll open is Steve Rudolph at Monsanto. Please go ahead.
R. Hennecke Hello.
S. Rudolph I have a question regarding, I’ve been told by several people that the
process chain would be a good use for deletion of PSA data also.
Although it looks like process chains are a little more robust in handling
data loads and everything that is associated with it. Would you
R. Hennecke Yes, I would recommend the process chains for PSA deletion and one
practical example for doing this would be deleting the change log data of
an ODS object.
S. Rudolph Very good, and is there any detailled documentation on process chains out
there?
S. Rudolph Yes.
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R. Hennecke We have this conference call of last year: Operating BW 3.0 Using
Process Chains. So it’s in the same folder where you downloaded this
presentation but just in the 2001 to 2002 section. And also have a look in
the BW documentation.
S. Rudolph Right.
R. Hennecke And also, process chains are included in the BW standard training:
Coordinator The next line we’ll open is Irwin Castelino with Bearing Point. Please go
ahead.
I. Castelino Yes, I have a question about the process chains where you say they are
local. My question is, are they local by default and what are the difference
if there is any.
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R. Hennecke I don’t understand exactly your question. The local process chain, as I
from another process chain. If you don’t do this, then it is just one process
chain running. Means the local process chain is indicating that it’s a two
level process chain hierarchy where the meta chain is triggering a local
I. Castelino That’s really what I was trying to find out. So basically, I’d have to
schedule one process chain from another process chain and then the
R. Hennecke Yes, that’s right. If you want to do this, schedule one process chain from
another, then you need to use the local process chain types. If this process
chain is in a different system, then it’s the remote process chain type.
I. Castelino Okay, one quick question: If I have two process chains, say for sales and
CRM, should they both be in the same process chain or should they be
separate?
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R. Hennecke It depends on the time when they are scheduled. If one process chain
needs to be scheduled at 2:00 in the morning and the other one at 5:00,
then I would not put it in the same process chain. If you say both have to
run during the night between 2:00 and 4:00, then you can say first, I put
both in the same process chain and then I link the two process chains using
a red/green link.
you should not say if the first one is finishing successfully, then the next
Coordinator Our next question comes from the line of Dennis Wallman with Domtar;
please go ahead.
D. Wallman Okay, hello, Rudolf. Yes, I’m here. Actually, you gentlemen have
answered my question. It also dealt with the restart process from a failed
process when a step has failed in the process chain. Actually, as we spoke
O. Mayer Okay, Bill, let’s take just two more questions because we’re at ten after
here of the hour. So two more questions and then we’ll have to call it
quits and if you have more questions, you can just mail them to me. My e-
and forward them to Rudolf. So go ahead, Bill, and let’s take two more
questions.
Coordinator All right, the next line we’ll open is Laxmichand Fatnani and Air
L. Fatnani Hello, I have a weird problem. I am from the basis team here and the
collect jobs, they just keep running and the dialog word processes as well.
delete the whole process, it does not free the dialog work process. So I
have to restart the application server. Are this problem connected to the
R. Hennecke This might be because when you load data you set this option on load PSA
and data packages in parallel. So this was the slide, let’s see; it was slide
26. When you use that option, then the system will split up already on
source system level during extraction when doing the TRFC one dialog
the system the number of dialog processes to be used for the TRFC. So
then you will have for example four data packages to be sent to BW using
four dialog processes and then on BW for other dialog processes, we’ll
take over the data packages and we’ll write them to PSA. So you might
L. Fatnani Okay, that means this problem of the locking is connected related to table
R. Hennecke Yes, RSPCLOGCHAIN is in each case a process chain table. This is sure.
So it’s something that comes from the process chain. Now it needs to be
L. Fatnani Okay, another question: are there any external resource overhead on the
R. Hennecke No, not at all. The thing is, it’s just when you start processes in your
they take resources from the source system but it’s not different from
scheduling using info packages. So this does not change with process
Coordinator Thank you, our final question will come from the line of Sam Vareghese
Paula Yes, this is Paula actually, but we have an application where we have several users that
each other. We’ve set it up so when they get their data entered, they can
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wondering if there was a better way to do that other than scheduling the
R. Hennecke Yes, there is one way, or there will be one way. Where are the files? Are
R. Hennecke For BW, so…you know the process type operational system command and
on the operational system like looking for files. The bad thing about it is,
that this process type cannot send any status or any instance to other
processes. So it means it can just run but it cannot tell you how it did run
So means for BW, for a future BW release, it is already planned that you then use this
operational system command and you give a certain string in and you say,
Paula Okay.
O. Mayer Okay, thank you, of course, Rudolf, for preparing the presentation and
covering this topic in such detail, and based on the number of questions
we had, it was a very good topic and lots of interest in that. Again, I
Then thanks again, everybody, for dialing in. Of course, thanks to Rudolf
also, and then just a reminder; our next topic on May 29th is going to be
cover that topic. So again, thank you, everybody, for dialing in and thank
you again, Rudolf, for taking the time out to do this presentation.
Coordinator Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your teleconference for today.
Thank you for your participation and for using the AT&T Executive