Display and Control Work Processes (SAP Library - Tools for Monitoring the System)

Display and Control Work Processes

Use

Work processes do the majority of the processing of the SAP System. They execute dialog steps in user transactions, updates, lock administration, etc.

You can also find the term Work Process in the glossary.

You can display the current status of the work processes on the application server where you are logged on by choosing Monitor ® System monitoring ® Process overview or Transaction sm50 You must refresh the display to get updated information. The information on this screen is described in the following section.

The Process overview is intended primarily for information-gathering. For example, you can monitor processes to determine if the number of work processes in your system is adequate, to gather information for trouble-shooting, or for tuning.

Integration

By choosing Monitor - System monitoring - Servers, this displays the overview of the SAP application servers. Here, you can further display the work process overview for a particular server in the SAP System by clicking on the desired server name.

If system load is low and you are displaying the Process overview, you notice that your requests seem to be processed in only one work process. The dispatcher is trying to use one work process for as many dialog steps for one user as possible. This avoids having to reload the roll area for the user.

Features

The Process Overview displays the following information:

No: The internal ID number of a process. Used to identify messages that belong to a work process in the system log

Typ: Type of work process:

DIA: Work process for executing dialog steps in user transactions

UPD: Update process for making U1 (time-critical) database changes

UP2: Update process for executing U2 (not time-critical) database changes

ENQ: For locking or releasing SAP lock objects

BTC: For processing background jobs

SPO: For spool formatting processes

Pid: Process ID of the work process (on the operating system)

Status: Current status of the work process Possible statuses are:

Running (executing a request)

Waiting (idle and waiting for work)

Hold (held for a single user)

Hold is not an abnormal state, but a work process can only serve a single user.

If too many processes are in hold status, then system performance suffers. You can use the Reason column to identify holds that can be released.

Ended (aborted with Restart set to No)

Reasn: If a work process is in hold status, the reason is displayed. Typical reasons are: Debugging, CPIC activity, locks, updates, GUI (system waits for response from the SAPGUI front-end program, for example, for a remote function call (RFC)).

You may also see PRIV (PRIVate use) as a reason for holding a work process. PRIV indicates that a work process is reserved for a single user for memory management use. The work process has exceeded the limit of the SAP memory that is used by other processes. The process is held as long as the current user requires local memory. For more information, see Private Memory in the documentation on SAP Memory Management.

If a certain percentage of work processes are in PRIV status, the PRIV transactions are automatically ended when the user is not active in the transaction for a set period of time. You can set this time span in the SAP system profile.

Start: Indicates whether the process should be automatically restarted if a process ends prematurely. You can change the restart status of a process by choosing Process ® Restart after error ® Yes/No. Normally, leave Restart set to Yes.

If a work process aborts during its startup, the system automatically sets Restart to No. This measure protects against endless attempts to restart a process if a database system is not available, or another serious problem is affecting the system. After correcting the problem, you can change Restart to Yes so that the system starts the work processes.

Err: Indicates how many times a work process has aborted

Sem: Indicates the number of the semaphore for which a work process is waiting.

Normally, this field should be empty. If one or more semaphore numbers frequently appears, evaluate the performance of your system using the Performance Monitor.

CPU: Cumulative CPU time since the start of a work process. The time units are seconds and hundredths of seconds.

Note

Calculating CPU time is onerous. Therefore, you must request this information using the CPU function.

Time: Indicates the elapsed time used by a work process for the dialog step that it is currently processing

Report: ABAP program or report that is currently being executed

Cl.: Client for the session that is currently being executed

User: User whose request is currently being processed

Action: Action that is being executed by the current program. The actions displayed are recorded by the SAP Performance Monitor. The Performance Monitor must be active (SAP profile parameter stat/level = 1 (default)) for actions or database table accesses to be displayed.

Table: If the database is being accessed, this column shows the name of the table being accessed.

The menu offers the following functions:

Control and check processes (menu option Process)

Control ABAP program (menu option Program/Mode)

Edit processes (Menu Option List)

Goto: You can display detailed information about the process, or user information on the relevant user, or go back to the previous screen (corresponds to the green arrow).

Note

To manage users, use the User Overview ( Display and manage user sessions). In the Process Overview, you cannot be sure that a user session you want to cancel or delete is still active in the work process that you have chosen. You could unintentionally affect another user's session.