Background Processing: Concepts and Features 

For a very high-level introduction to background processing and job scheduling, see Getting Started.

Purpose

SAP background processing automates routine tasks and helps you optimize your organization’s SAP computing resources. Using background processing, you tell the SAP System to run programs for you. Background processing lets you move long-running or resource-intensive program runs to times when the system load is low. It also lets you delegate to the system the task of running reports or programs. Your dialog sessions are not tied up, and reports that run in the background are not subject to the dialog-step run-time limit that applies to interactive sessions. For more information, see Background Work Processes Explained.

The SAP System offers sophisticated support for background processing. You can choose from a variety of methods for scheduling and managing jobs. You can run both SAP-internal and external programs. And, for easier scheduling and management, you can run related programs as “job steps“ within a single background processing job, allowing a single background job to accomplish a complex task that consists of multiple processing steps.

The system includes sophisticated tools for managing jobs and diagnosing problems that occur, including a graphic monitor and a powerful and easy-to-use job programming interface for developing your own background-processing applications. There is also a job scheduling wizard that automates basic background job definition and can walk novice users through the entire process.

Finally, the background processing system has an interface to external management tools so you can integrate your SAP background processing into an external tool. Certified implementations of this interface are available for several external system management tools.

The following diagram shows the components that are involved in processing various types of background jobs.

Monitoring Background Processing

You can track background processing activity in your SAP System with both list-oriented and graphical monitors.

The list-oriented monitor (Transaction SM37) offers an administrator full control over background processing. From the main monitor screen, you can display current status and job details, change or withdraw scheduling and releases, display job logs, and use debugging and error-analysis tools. With appropriate authorization, you can also display the spool requests generated by ABAP job steps. For more information, see Managing Jobs with the Job Overview.

The graphical monitor (Transaction RZ01) is specialized for system operators. It provides a Gantt-chart view of background processing, showing all completed, active, and released jobs on a timeline across all available background servers and work processes and tracking previous job performance so that repeated jobs are always shown with Gantt chart lengths that reflect previous run times. For more information, see Using the Graphical Job Scheduling Monitor.