Tasty Bits from the BI4 Admin Pickle Jar Greg Myers

EVtechnologies

EV Technologies

EV Technologies is an SAP BusinessObjects solutions firm •  SAP Software Solutions Partner •  SAP Certified Solutions provider •  Sybase Certified Solutions provider •  SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Certified •  ASUG Members/Volunteers •  Migration experts – classic BusinessObjects products to

SAP BusinessObjects XI R2 – XI 3.1- BI4

SAP-PRESS

•  SAP BusinessObjects BI System Administration•  2nd Edition! •  BI4.1

•  Order online now @SAP-PRESS.com

Agenda •  I’m a BI4 Admin. Help me!!•  How to use the GLF Viewer on BI Platform logs•  How to use SAP Lumira on BI Platform logs•  The Currency of Concurrency•  How to use SAP Predictive Analysis to forecast

capacity•  How to use Microsoft Excel to forecast capacity•  Summary

SAP GLF Viewer for BI Platform logs Download from SAP Service Marketplace S-ID login required

SAP GLF Viewer for BI Platform Logs •  Filter your view on any column to quickly zero in on issues

– Analysis > Delay Visualizer makes a graphical

representation of the workflow and bottlenecks

SAP GLF Viewer for BI Platform Logs •  Export combined or filtered view as a single .glf file.

Great for uploading to SAP Support!

SAP GLF Viewer for BI Platform Logs •  Get even finer-grain workflow detail using the SAP Client Plugin

–  Download from SMP (S-ID Required)

–  Automatically “flips” on high-level BI4 server traces –  “Stamps” transactions with a unique ID

SAP GLF Viewer for BI Platform Logs •  Generates a file “BusinessTransaction.xml”

– Open the file in a text editor, copy the “id” value

SAP GLF Viewer for BI Platform Logs •  Use this value to filter import of your BI4 logs in the GLF Viewer

–  Will only import transactions that were “stamped” by the SAP Client Plug-in. Trace will be ONLY your transaction. Awesome!!

Decode SAP Passport with BI Platform Support Tool •  Open the BI Platform Support Tool

– Go to Tools > SAP Passport Decoder

Decode SAP Passport with BI Platform Support Tool •  Browse and open your BusinessTransaction.xml •  Copy out the value for the Introscope Query Filter

Open up SAP Extended Diagnostics •  Navigate to Workstation > Query Historical Events

Query String and Set Date Range •  Paste in the query string from the BI Platform Support Tool •  Set the date and time range based on the Support Tool info •  Click “Go”

Sort and Analyze

•  Select All transactions •  Click on Call time (ms) to sort – Longest Process will be on top

Sort and Analyze •  Tree View will show “stoplight” trees to spot bottlenecks

SAP Lumira for BI Platform logs

SAP Lumira for BI Platform Logs •  Mass rename your files to ensure SAP Lumira will open this content •  Notepad++ is your very very best friend as a free and advanced editor for

windows •  Trim headers of extraneous information so that SAP Lumira has the ability

to interpret the header information correctly •  Trim evil carriage returns that will prevent SAP Lumira from importing the

data correctly •  Fix known separator issues that have artificial spacing and piping •  Go forth and munge in SAP Lumira •  Why? One file can over 65,000 rows of data

SAP Lumira for BI Platform Logs •  Mass rename your files to ensure SAP Lumira will

open this content – Retrieve the files from your SAP BusinessObjects install

directory logging folder – Bulk rename with a simple command line statement

•  ren *.glf *.txt

SAP Lumira for BI Platform Logs

•  Notepad++ is your very very best friend as a free and advanced editor for windows – Download it free today at http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ – Other noteworthy tools in our toolbag:

•  Wireshark – Network tracing •  Fiddler 2 – HTTP tracing •  HTTP Watch – HTTP tracing •  7-zip – Compression tool

SAP Lumira for BI Platform Logs

•  Trim headers of extraneous information so that SAP Lumira has the ability to interpret the header information correctly –  Open all trace logs in the series in Notepad ++ by selecting them

all, right click, and choose Notepad ++

–  All actions taken from here on out in Notepad++ will happen across all files in a single batch action

SAP Lumira for BI Platform Logs •  Trim headers of extraneous information so that SAP Lumira has the ability to interpret the header

information correctly –  Two sections in grey selected here need to be removed with a search/replace to remove

them

–  With the text selected, visit the Search menu, select Replace, and note the “Find what” text is already populated and simply hit “Replace All in All Opened Documents”

•  Be sure to get the extra space at the end of the “Columns” row

SAP Lumira for BI Platform Logs •  Trim evil carriage returns that will prevent SAP Lumira from importing the

data correctly –  Each row has some weird line wrapping happening

–  In the same manner as before, select the ending character of the first row and the pipe at the beginning of the second (highlighted in gray here)

–  Search and Replace as before to remove this

How do you effectively measure concurrency ?

Concurrent CMS

sessions?

Running Crystal Jobs?

The Currency of Concurrency

Concurrent Webi Threads?

One row per second

Get all actions

Find the overlap

7.6m Rows Over 2 Yrs

The Currency of Concurrency •  Practical reasons why we care about concurrency:

–  Server tuning – how many people are doing things throughout the day? –  Troubleshooting – how do we ensure that the system is not maxing out

resources? –  Predicting growth – Anticipating the right time to scale licensing and

hardware based on past behaviors •  Risks:

–  These queries can be expensive –  These queries rely on you actually having Auditor enabled!

Applications Server tuning

Troubleshooting

Mashups to Metric data

SAP Predictive Analysis for Forecasting

SAP Predictive Analysis for Forecasting •  Import your performance metrics

SAP Predictive Analysis for Forecasting •  Visualize it!

Select the Correct Algorithms

•  Build your prediction and run it – R-Single Exponential Smoothing used for this demo

Make it Pretty

•  Visualize it!

Microsoft Excel to Forecast Capacity Simple line graph of same data

Microsoft Excel to Forecast Capacity Add a Trendline and r-squared formula

Microsoft Excel to Forecast Capacity Forecast when you will reach 100% CPU Build the formula

Microsoft Excel to Forecast Capacity Get the result (which looks like a funky number)

Adjust Date Formats Format the number as a Date to get your answer

Microsoft Excel to Forecast Capacity •  Data set was pretty small •  Prediction and Forecast not really that accurate •  More data in actuals help to make better predictions

Where to Find More Information •  evtechnologies.com/blog

– A ridiculous number of posts, all about SAP BusinessObjects •  bit.ly/bi4e2etrace

– The SCN article by our pal, Toby Johnston, Software Engineer @ SAP

•  sap.com/upgradebi – An amazing resource aimed at helping customers implement

and upgrade SAP BusinessObjects

More Information Contact: Greg Myers Email: greg@evtechnologies.com On the Web: http://evtechnologies.com Twitter: @gpmyers Contact: Eric Vallo Email: eric@evtechnologies.com On the Web: http://evtechnologies.com Twitter: @ericvallo

Questions?