Configuring SNC: SAP GUI when Using Direct Start 

In all of the supported operating system environments, you can establish a SAP GUI connection to the AS ABAP by executing sapgui.exe from the command prompt. Under Windows, it is customary to set up a shortcut on the desktop.

To be able to establish an SNC-protected connection between SAP GUI and the AS ABAP, you need to set the SNC parameters either in environment variables or in the command line. The table below shows these parameters and where you can set each of them.

SNC Command Line Parameters for SAP GUI à AS ABAP

Parameter	Short Description	Requried or Optional	Permitted Values	Default	Where to set
SNC_PARTNERNAME	SNC name of the application server	Required	String value in quotation marks	None	Command line
SNC_LIB	Path and file name of the gssapi library	Required	String value in quotation marks	None	Command line or environment variable
SNC_MODE	SNC activation indicator	Optional	1, 0	1, if SNC_PARTNERNAME is set	Command line
SNC_QOP	Quality of protection (protection level)	Optional	1,2,3,8,9	3	Command line or environment variable

The following shows an example of the command line entry to start SAP GUI (under Windows)

In this example, we set all of the parameters in the command line:

sapgui.exe host1 01 SNC_PARTNERNAME="p:CN=sap01.host1, OU=TEST01, O=myCompany, C=US" SNC_QOP=9 SNC_LIB="C:\SNC\<snc_library>.dll"

The connection is established to the application server host1. The application server's SNC name is: p:CN=sap01.host1, OU=TEST01, O=myCompany, C=US. The level of protection is 9, indicating that the maximum level of protection should be applied to the connection, and the shared library is located at: C:\SNC\<snc_library>.dll.