Installation and Configuration of SAPGUI for Java on Linux

Based on many questions in my email inbox, asking how to install and configure SAPGUI for Java on Linux, here I’ll explain it briefly.

Prepare these stuffs before you can proceed to installation :

1. You have to make sure that your Linux system has been installed with JRE (Java Runtime Environment) from SUN Microsystem (http://java.sun.com). If you don;t have it, just download it from here. Some of linux distros such as Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE etc using JRE from GNU called GIJ (GNU for Java). We can’t use this JRE. We need to replaced it. I’ll show you how to changed it later.

Print SAP documents using Linux

A lot of people keep asking me how to print SAP R/3 documents using printer attached on Linux PC.

SAPGUI for Java is already installed on my Linux PC but I was unable to print any SAP documents ? We can’t use Frontend Printing (F acces method) since there was no SAPLPD program on it. Tell me how ??

Paid Support : Cheap SAP Print Management using Linux Client

My deepest regret that I have to do this in order to support me maintaining this blog since I have to maintain my internet connection. I need to charge to you if you want to get this simple information.

I am offering paid support to Basis who want to implement Linux Migration on workstation so that by using SAPGUI for Java on Linux can print smoothly as well as Windows-based SAPGUI client. On SAPGUI for Windows, you can easily print SAP documents. But you can’t do that when you’re using SAPGUI for Java on Linux.

If you are interested in this solution, please call me on YM : devratt.

Paid SAP Basis Consulting Services

Hi guys,

I am offering Remote SAP Basis Support and Service to your company. No matter your company have dedicated SAP Basis or not, we can help you. Your company could hire me as Remote SAP Basis.

You can check here for futher information.

How to Reset SPAM queue

Sometimes when you are upload and implement Support Package, its jammed. Then you need to reset SPAM queue. Here is the step how to reset SPAM queue :

Go to Tx SE37
select program name : OCS_RESET_QUEUE
test/execute (f8)
give the value for import parameters
IV_tool : SPAM
IV_FORCE : X

Execute (f8)

there after the spam queue will get reset and then you can do it again.

BRTOOLS 720 (for Oracle 10g and 11g)

You can download

Brtools 7.20 is available on the servicemarket place at the following link

http://service.sap.com/swdc

Download
Support Packages and Patches – Entry by Application Group
Additional Components
SAP Kernel
SAP Kernel 64bit
Choose your OS
Choose Oracle

DBATL720O10_1-20005243.SAR DBATOOLS Package for Oracle 10g and 11g

The oss note 12741 is also useful for download paths for all released Brtools.

How to find indexes which are candidate for rebuild?

I know it’s a very arguable question, but let me put my words and then you can comment.

I follow different approaches to find out indexes for rebuild

- Find out indexes having height(blevel+1) > 4 i.e. Indexes having BLEVEL > 3
How:
SQL> select owner,index_name,table_name,blevel from dba_indexes where BLEVEL>3

- Analyze indexes and find out ratio of (DEL_LF_ROWS/LF_ROWS*100) is > 20
How:
First “Analyze the index with validate structure option” and then,

SQL> SELECT name,height,lf_rows,del_lf_rows,(del_lf_rows/lf_rows)*100 as ratio FROM INDEX_STATS;

But (a big but), the reason to rebuild should be because of poor performance of your queries using indexes. You should/must not rebuild indexes if you find both the above reason true for index if it is not coupled with poor SQL performance.

See this example:

SQL> analyze index TEST_INDX validate structure; — First analyze the suspect index

Index analyzed.

SQL> SELECT name,height,lf_rows,lf_blks,del_lf_rows FROM INDEX_STATS;

NAME HEIGHT LF_ROWS LF_BLKS DEL_LF_ROWS
———— ———- ———- ———– ————-
TEST_INDX 8 938752 29575 73342

You can see height of the index is 8 and also high number of DEL_LF_ROWS

SQL> set autotrace on
SQL> set timing on
SQL>
SQL> select count(*) from TEST_TABLE where TEST_COL like ‘http://www.hots%’;

COUNT(*)
———-
39700
Elapsed: 00:00:27.25

Execution Plan
———————————————————-
Plan hash value: 870163320

Id Operation Name Rows Bytes Cost (%CPU) Time

0 SELECT STATEMENT 1 117 10 (0) 00:00:01

1 SORT AGGREGATE 1 117

*2 INDEX RANGE SCAN TEST_INDX 115 13455 10 (0) 00:00:01

Statistics
———————————————————-
1 recursive calls
0 db block gets
764 consistent gets
757 physical reads
0 redo size
516 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
468 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
0 sorts (memory)
0 sorts (disk)
1 rows processed

Now you rebuild the indexes

SQL> alter index TEST_INDX rebuild;

Index altered.

SQL> select count(*) from TEST_TABLE where TEST_COL like ‘http://www.hots%’;

COUNT(*)
———-
39700

Elapsed: 00:00:06.18

Execution Plan
———————————————————-
Plan hash value: 870163320 – See here although it is using the same plan but still it is faster

Id Operation Name Rows Bytes Cost (%CPU) Time

———————————————————————————-

0 SELECT STATEMENT 1 117 6 (0) 00:00:01

1 SORT AGGREGATE 1 117

* 2 INDEX RANGE SCAN TEST_INDX 115 13455 6 (0) 00:00:01

Statistics
———————————————————-
15 recursive calls
0 db block gets
592 consistent gets
588 physical reads
0 redo size
516 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
468 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
0 sorts (memory)
0 sorts (disk)

SQL> SELECT name,height,lf_rows,lf_blks,del_lf_rows,distinct_keys,used_space FROM INDEX_STATS;

NAME HEIGHT LF_ROWS LF_BLKS DEL_LF_ROWS
—————————— ———- ———- ———- ———–
TEST_INDX 4 865410 15434 0

This clearly indicates rebuild helped my query performance. The height of index is reduced to 4 and DEL_LF_ROWS is 0

Now coming to second of part of Harvinder’s comment.

Possible ways of Rebuilding.

- Online/Offline.

ONLINE Rebuild (8i onwards)

SQL> Alter index rebuild online;

This allows parallel DML to go on while Index is getting rebuild. Remember, online index requires more space, as it creates a new index before dropping the old one.

Index Rebuild is primarily a 3 step process

Prepare phase: Oracle locks the table for a fraction of second (actually not felt) to build index structure and populate data-dictionary.

Build phase: Most of the work is done in this phase. Oracle engine populates the index using the table and allows parallel DML’s, parallel DML’s uses a temporary journal table (b tree index like structure) to host the entries while the new index is getting populated.

Merge phase: Now the final stage, Oracle merges the new index with the journal table and drops the old index. Even during the merge phase, any changes to the table are recorded in the journal table and they get merged towards end of this phase.

9i onwards, online index rebuild feature includes Reverse Key, Function Based and Key Compressed indexes.

Offline Index rebuild.

SQL> Alter index rebuild;

This is conventional rebuild which was used(still available) before 8i. In this rebuild process, oracle drops the old index and creates a new one. In this process, no extra space is required, but parallel dml’s are not supported.

Just for Refresh : Steps to upgrade Oracle from 11.1.0.6.0 to 11.1.0.7.0

steps to upgrade 11.1.0.6.0 to 11.1.0.7.0

Step1:

using winSCP or anyother tool copy the patch file p6890831_111070_Linux-x86-64.zip to the environment from the machine where you are having patch file.

Step2:
login : oracle
password:
Uncompress the binary source
$unzip p6890831_111070_Linux-x86-64.zip
Example:-
After unzipping , you can find the below folder Disk1
c111ptqhdd009: /home/oracle
$ cd /oracle/app/patches/
c111ptqhdd009: /oracle/app/patches
$ ls
Disk1 p6890831_111070_Linux-x86-64.zip

Step3:
Bring down the application

Step4:
login : oracle
password:
Bring down the database
sqlplus ‘/as sysdba’
sql>shutdown immediate;
sql>exit
>ps -ef |grep pmon

Make sure that oracle is not running
>lsnrctl stop
>lsnrctl status
Make sure that the listener is not running.
Take a cold database backup
Controlfiles, datafiles, redo logs, archive files, tempfiles must be included in the backup. If the files are in different paths, the same has to be backedup.
>mkdir /backup_date
>cp /App1/oracle/oradata/orcl/*.* /backup/backup_date
>cd $ORACLE_HOME/dbs
>cp inittest.ora inittest.ora_bkpdate
>cp spfiletest.ora spfiletest.or_bkpdate
>cp orapwtest.ora orapwtest.ora_bkpdate

Oracle : Move datafile to different location

From time to time a DBA might need move an Oracle database datafile from one location to another. Reasons for this might include: I/O balancing for performance reasons, or to rectify incorrect naming standards.

Choose one of the following procedures based on the log mode of your database (select log_mode from sys.v_$database):

Database is in ARCHIVELOG mode

• Take the datafile offline with the “ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE ‘/old/location’ OFFLINE;” command.
• Copy or move the datafile to its new location. On Unix this can be done with the “dd” command.

Example:

dd if=/old/location of=/new/location bs=4096

SQL> ALTER DATABASE RENAME FILE '/old/location' TO '/new/location';
SQL> RECOVER DATAFILE '/new/location';
SQL> ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE '/new/location' ONLINE;

Database is in NOARCHIVELOG mode

• Shutdown the database
• Copy or move the datafile to its new location. On Unix this can be done with the “dd” command. Example:

dd if=/old/location of=/new/location bs=4096

• Start SQL*Plus, do a “STARTUP MOUNT” and rename the file:

SQL> ALTER DATABASE RENAME FILE '/old/location' TO '/new/location';
SQL> ALTER DATABASE OPEN;

Virtualization on IBM

IBM has a 40-plus year history of virtualization. No other vendor can come close to making this claim. The fact is that virtually (pardon the pun) everything they have implemented on the mid-range, has already been done on the mainframe. They offer one virtualization strategy, PowerVM, unlike the myriad of solutions available from Sun or HP. The technology itself uses a hypervisor-based solution (which IBM has finally implemented though Xen, but only on their x86 platform), which sits between the operating system and the hardware. PowerVM is a combination of hardware and software, which accounts for the IBM Systems p virtualization strategy.

The technology that makes up PowerVM includes:

• Micropartition and Shared processor pools — Micropartioning lets you slice up pieces of your CPUs into virtual partitions. At the same time, it allows for the sharing of CPU, RAM, and I/O. You can carve your partition with up to 1/10 of a CPU. Using a feature called uncapped partitions, you can even exceed the amount of hardware that you configure on your partition, your entitled capacity (EC), which is an important feature in environments where activity fluctuates. This workload management is all done automatically, without requiring the usage of speciality workload management tools. IBM has since retired their workload management tool, Partition Load Manager (PLM), recognizing that it was the automation inherent in its shared processor pool strategy that really captivated the audience.
• VIO Servers — These are special partitions that let you to service resources to VIO clients. The servers own the actual resources, which are network adapters or disk I/O. These partitions save money and provide flexibility by allowing partitions to shared I/O resources. Shared Ethernet and virtual SCSI are the solutions that allow for sharing network and disk I/O.

During the past year, IBM has changed their virtualization nomenclature from Advanced Power Virtualization to PowerVM. In the process, IBM added several significant features to their virtualization product line:

• Live Partition Mobility — This feature, introduced with the Power6 architecture, lets you move running AIX or Linux partitions from one physical server to another.
• Lx86. This recent innovation lets you run x86 Linux applications that were not specifically ported to the Power Architecture directly on a Linux partition without a recompile.
• Shared Dedicated Capacity — This feature lets you spare CPU cycles from dedicated processor partitions toward the shared processor pool.
• Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) — This is a browser-based tool that provides the option of not having to have a dedicated hardware management console (HMC) from which to manage virtualization resources.

Active Memory Sharing

Active Memory Sharing (AMS) is a new feature introduced in 2009. This feature, available on Power6, is the final piece of the puzzle for PowerVM on Power6. It allows for the sharing of RAM, similar to how users have been able to share and micropartition CPUs, which, in turn, allows for the increased use of memory through the Power hypervisor without having to do a DLPAR operation. AMS makes it possible to use spare idle memory not being used by other LPARs toward the distribution of LPARs. This empowers customers to optimize their RAM configuration and ensures that resources do not sit idly by while their brethren LPARs may be in dire need of assistance. The next section introduces the new POWER7 system.

How does AMS accomplish this? It does so by allowing for a shared memory pool, which is virtualized through the Power hypervisor. There is no binding of physical memory to a partition’s logical memory in this environment. In fact, the total logical memory of all shared memory partitions are allowed to exceed the real physical memory allocated to the pool. This results in logical memory being oversubscribed, which is okay because the hypervisor takes care of all the logistics. Essentially, the hypervisor backs excess logical memory using paging devices. It does this through a special paging VIOs partition. AIX still manages its own paging device, which helps the hypervisor manage the oversubscription. The hypervisor actually asks the operating system for help, and the OS steals aged pages, saves the contents to paging devices, and loans them out. This feature is enabled through a framework called collaborative memory management, which is a new feature of the OS that lets the OS page out contents and loan pages to the hypervisor. AMS also provides a great deal of flexibility because it can be disabled, making the hypervisor paging device the only device that needs to be optimized. This is only available through AIX and System i, not Linux. It should also be said that neither HP nor Sun offers anything remotely close to AMS.

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What’s on the horizon for 2010?

On the same day in February when IBM chose to announce their new POWER7 product line, HP also announced new Integrity servers, which will use Intel’s Itanium 9300 processor—codenamed Tukwila. While there are currently no available HP products powered by the new Tukwila chips, they are rumored to be arriving in May. Interestingly, the Tukwila Itanium’s sub-2GHz speed is manufactured using a 65 nm process, while IBM’s new POWER7 was manufactured using a 45 nm processor, which means that the new IBM chip should run faster, with lower power, than HP’s new chip. While Tukwila is certainly an important innovation, at the time of this writing, no roadmap for HP products containing these chips had been published. IBM on the other hand, has the roadmap, servers, and virtualization enhancements. They are all real and not just vaporware.

In addition to the obvious chip advantages just mentioned, the POWER7 architecture also introduces:

• Modular systems with linear scalability
• Physical and virtual management
• Binary capability
• Energy Thermal Management
• PowerVM feature improvements

This article focuses on the PowerVM virtualization enhancements around the POWER7. What is most impressive is that benchmarks have shown that IBM’s new servers will deliver up to twice the performance and four times the virtualization capabilities as its powerful POWER6, for the same price and energy usage. It does this by introducing a new advanced modular design that can support up to 64 POWER7 cores. In its announcement, IBM rolled out four servers in the mid-range and enterprise classes, leaving blade, entry-level, and the big-iron 590 replacements to come out later this year. It did release one enterprise-level box, the Power 780, which is a cross between the 570 and 595. One major feature of the 780 is TurboCore technology, which gives you the option to run the system with fewer cores to exploit increased cache from other cores on the chip, offering the highest clock speed of any POWER7 system at 4.1 GHz running in TurboCore mode. This is twice the power of HP’s new Tukwila chip, running at less energy.

TurboCore mode enables workload optimization by dynamically selecting the most suitable threading mode: single, standard Simultaneous Multi-Threading (two threads), or SMT with four threads per core. It also comes with Active Memory Expansion, which allows the effective memory capacity of the system to be much larger than the actual physical memory of the box—up to 100%. It also offers intelligent threading and Active Memory Expansion technologies and can take advantage of Live Partition Mobility as well, which helps migrate users from Power6-based systems.

In the IBM world, it’s all about “virtualization without limits.” The new IBM Power 780 can support up to 640 virtual machines because the server itself can support up to 64 cores with 10 virtual machines per core. Later systems will support up to 100 cores and 1000 virtual machines!

How is all of this managed? It’s done through VMControl, a virtualization plug-in for IBM Systems Director that can be used to manage virtualization on POWER7 servers. It exists in Express, Standard, or the Enterprise edition of PowerVM. This software lets you create and store ready-to-run virtual images in a shared repository. The standard edition even lets you create and manage system pools, which are collections of virtual images running on multiple servers, in a way that is as easy as managing a single LPAR.