Tracing HTTP Requests 

Use

While you are developing a BSP application, you will be wanting to test parts of the application. Sometimes errors may occur that may not be able to be solved even with the help of the debugger.

To analyze the cause of the error, you need to be able to record the data streams to and from the SAP Web Application Server. You can do this using the trace function in the SAP Web Application Server.

The component, Internet Communication Manager, (ICM), regulates the HTTP data traffic. With transaction smicm you can manage and trace this SAP kernel component.

For more information on the ICM see section Components of the SAP Web Application Server.

The following explains how to implement tracing.

Prerequisites

You know how to create BSP applications and understand how the Internet Communication Manager (ICM) works.

Procedure

  1. Call transaction SMICM.
  2. Select an ICM process and choose Goto ® Trace File ® Display File:

    3. The trace files are displayed:

    Each trace has several levels. The trace level is set to 1 as the default. In this setting only the most important system events and errors are logged in brief. This level is usually not sufficient for a more precise error search. This is why you can easily change the trace level. The appropriate menu option is shown in the next screen shot:

  3. To increase the trace level, in the SMICM initial screen choose Goto ® Trace Level ® Increase:

You can set the level directly or increase/decrease it by one level. The lowest level is 1, the highest level with the most detail is 3. The entire data traffic is recorded in the highest level.

 

As all the data traffic is recorded at trace level 3, you should only set this level if you want to correct an error. Immediately after the recording has ended, you should reset the level to the standard level 1.
Otherwise large data volumes are written to the file system that may cause the hard disk partition to overflow.

See also:

Components of the SAP Web Application Server

For more information on managing the ICM process see: