Show TOC

 Background Job Analysis

 

Background job analysis (BACKGROUND_JOB_ANALYSIS) is a standalone tool that graphically displays SM37 data. It is part of the Service Tools for Applications Plug-In ST-A/PI, and is locally available on every SAP backend system with a recent ST-A/PI plug-in.

The tool was designed to identify system bottlenecks caused by background jobs. It can be used, for example, when you encountered a performance issue during a certain time period, and you want to find out what was running at that time on your system. The tool can help you identify if there are possibilities to re-schedule jobs at different times or perhaps shift workload from one server to another.

Launching the Tool

To launch the tool from the Job Management work center, under Common Tasks, choose Analyze Jobs.

Note Note

You can also call the BACKGROUND_JOB_ANALYSIS tool in transaction ST13, or by executing the ABAP report /SSA/BTC in transaction SA38/SE38/SE80.

End of the note.
Performing an Analysis

The entry screen is similar to transaction SM37, but you can only select the status Active, Finished and/or Canceled (and not Released or Scheduled).

The output screen contains the following three sections:

  • The first shows the selection criteria and provides information about how many job executions had a runtime of more than 5 minutes and how many with less than 5 minutes.

  • The second is a job list similar to transaction SM37, but it shows only the long-running jobs (longer than 5 minutes). It shows the variant, executing server, and work process. The duration is shown in a hh:mm:ss format instead of seconds.

  • The third is a graphical representation of all the long-running jobs. The length of a bar represents the job runtime. The jobs are arranged so that you can read which application server and which work process was utilized at which point in time. Additionally, you see the average CPU idleness of the respective host server per clock hour (similar to transaction ST06). The color scheme is the same as in SM37: green jobs finished successfully, red jobs cancelled and blue jobs are still active.

    From within the graphic, you can navigate to transaction SM37 or STAD to view job details.