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Procedure documentationDisplaying and Controlling Work Processes Locate this document in the navigation structure

 

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 a snapshot of the status of the work processes on the application server where you are logged on. (Menu   Administration   System Administration   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 assess if the instance is working to full capacity, to gather information for trouble-shooting, or for tuning.

Integration

If you first display the Overview of SAP Servers, by choosing   System Monitoring   Servers  , you can display the work process overview for any server in the SAP system by double-clicking the line for the desired system.

Note Note

If system load is low, you may notice while using the Process Overview that your requests appear to execute in only a single 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.

End of the note.

Procedure

Monitoring

The Process Overview displays the following information:

Column

Meaning

No

The internal ID number of a process. Used to identify messages that belong to a work process in the system log

Type

Type of work process:

  • DIA Work process for executing dialog steps in user transactions

  • UPD Update process for making V1 (time-critical) database changes

  • UP2 Update process for executing V2 (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 a request)

  • Hold (held for one user) is not an abnormal state, but a work process can only serve a single user.

    If too many processes are in Hold, then system performance suffers. You can then use the Reason field to identify holds that perhaps can be released.

  • Stopped (aborted; Restart set to No).

  • Shutdown: Process terminated because of a shutdown

    For more information, see SAP Application Server States

  • Reserved: Process is reserved

    For more information, see Dynamic Work Processes

Reason

If a work process is in hold status, the reason is displayed. Typical reasons include the following: Debugging, CPIC activity, locks, updates, GUI (system waits for response from the SAPGUI front-end program, for example, for a remote function call (RFC)). For an overview of the possible parameters, refer to the F1 help.

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 more than a certain percentage of work processes are in PRIV hold state, then PRIV transactions are automatically terminated if the user is not active in the transaction for a set period of time. You can set this timespan in the SAP system profile.

Start/Restart

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 since the instance was started. You can also reset the counter.

For more information, see Edit Process (menu option: List)

Stored Semaphore

Specifies the number of the semaphore held by the work process. If the process is holding several semaphores, the numbers are separated by inverted commas. F1 help provides a list of all semaphores used by SAP.

Curr. Sem.

Indicates the number of the semaphore for which a work process is waiting. Normally, this field should be empty. If it occurs again after refresh, you can see in the Locked Sem. column whether the required semaphore is being held by another work process. F1 help provides a list of all semaphores used by SAP.

CPU

Cumulative CPU time used by a work process since it was started. The time units are seconds and hundredths of seconds.

Note Note

Calculating CPU time is onerous. For this reason you have to request this information directly. Choose   List   CPU   or CPU (CPU).

End of the note.

Time

Indicates the elapsed time used by a work process for the dialog step that it is currently being processed

Report

ABAP program or report that is currently being executed

Clie:

Client for the session that is currently being executed

User

User whose request is currently being processed

Action

Action that is being performed by the program that is running. The actions that are displayed are those that 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 contains the name of the table that is being accessed.
Information Area

You can also display an information area in the header area, in which the following information about the processes is displayed.

  • Server, date, and time

  • Total number of work processes

  • For each configured work process type (dialog, background, update task, spool) you can see the following information:

    • Number of work processes of this type that are currently available

    • Number of work processes of this type that are currently free

    • Utilization of work processes of this type: Average workload = (x / y / z) means that x processes of this type were fully utilized in the last minute, y in the last five minutes, and z in the last 15 minutes. If no average workload is specified, all work processes of this type were free in the last 15 minutes.

      A workload value that is higher than the number of processes of this type indicates that there were wait situations.

      Example Example

      The line

      Dialog 16 / 9 (total / free), average load = ( 8,084 / 10,495 / 7,062)

      means that 9 out of 16 dialog work processes are currently free. Eight processes were fully utilized over the last minute (corresponds to 50% utilization), 10 in the last 5 minutes, and 7 in the last 15 minutes. So over the course of the last 15 minutes the workload increased initially and then tailed off again.

      End of the example.

      You can also display the workload as a percentage. Choose   List   Configuration  , and select Load as a Percentage.

  • Number of configurable and dynamic work processes)

To show the information area, choose   List   Configuration   and check the With Information Area checkbox.

Administration

The menu offers the following functions:

  • Administration:

    Managing Work Processes

    Saving Trace Files Locally

  • Edit Process (List Menu Item)

  • Goto: Here you can display user info for the user that is currently occupying the work process or chose Back to return to the previous screen (same function as the green arrow).

    Note 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.

    End of the note.

More Information

Dynamic Work Processes